Bacon hails Bonnie Tyler as one of rock’s great voices
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Actor Kevin Bacon has led tributes to the Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler, whose death at the age of 75 was announced on Thursday 9 July, describing her as "one of the great voices of rock". Bacon, who starred in the 1984 film Footloose, credited Tyler's track "Holding Out For a Hero" with elevating one of the coming-of-age film's most memorable scenes, remarking that he "could not imagine chicken racing a tractor to any other song."
Tyler, born Gaynor Hopkins in Neath in 1951, died in hospital in Portugal on 8 July following the illness for which she was being treated, having undergone emergency intestinal surgery in Faro in May and spent time in a medically induced coma. She rose to global fame in 1983 with "Total Eclipse of the Heart", written and produced by Jim Steinman, which spent four weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and made her the first and only Welsh-born singer to top that chart. Other tributes came from Bryan Adams, who thanked her for covering his ballad "Straight From The Heart", and Catherine Zeta-Jones, whose cousin was married to Tyler and who recalled the singer performing at her 2000 wedding to Michael Douglas.
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Bonnie Tyler was a Welsh singer, born Gaynor Hopkins in Neath in 1951, best known for her distinctive husky voice. She became a global star in 1983 with "Total Eclipse of the Heart", which topped the US charts and made her the only Welsh-born singer to reach No. 1 there. Another of her hits, "Holding Out For a Hero", later became closely associated with the 1984 film Footloose.
Kevin Bacon is the American actor who starred in Footloose, the coming-of-age film that used Tyler's song during one of its best-known scenes. His comments form part of a wider set of tributes paid to Tyler following news of her death, alongside remarks from other public figures including the musician Bryan Adams and the actor Catherine Zeta-Jones, who had a personal connection to Tyler through family and had seen her perform at a private event.
This background matters because it explains why Tyler's death has prompted tributes from figures in film and music beyond the pop world she came from, reflecting the reach her songs had across different generations and forms of entertainment.
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Originally published by Billboard as “Kevin Bacon Pays Tribute to ‘Footloose’ Soundtrack Singer Bonnie Tyler: ‘One of the Great Voices of Rock’”.