A solar eclipse and a Bonnie Tyler ballad’s moment under the Sun

One could blame it on cosmic coincidence, unrequited love or the power of nostalgia but the complete solar eclipse in North America on April 8 has given Bonnie Tyler’s ‘Total eclipse of the heart’ a renewed moment under the Sun 40 years after its debut. The Welsh musician’s 1983 ballad surged back into the spotlight, becoming the preferred background note to the recent astronomic phenomenon.

In all fairness though, this isn’t the first time that the song, an MTV staple back in the day, has experienced a resurgence during an eclipse. The last time Tyler’s powerhouse vocals and — let’s admit it, moony lyrics — saw a popularity bump was in August 2017, during the previous solar eclipse in the region. When it had debuted, the song had trended at number one both in the UK and the US as well as in several other countries in the world. What could be common between a natural phenomenon and a song about a love gone wrong? Not much really, except that the receding of love, poets, philosophers and the jilted will say, can sometimes feel like a dimming of the light. Or, as Tyler sang, “Once upon a time there was light in my life/ But now there’s only love in the dark/ Nothing I can say/ A total eclipse of the heart”. If, however, one likes it darker, and has a sense of humour like the song’s writer and producer Jim Steinman obviously did, hold the sneer right there. In a 2002 interview, Steinman had revealed why the eclipse was central to his scheme of inspiration: He had conceived of the song as a vampire love story.