Rock · Pop · Power Ballads
A distinctive grain in the voice, from direct heartbreak to widescreen pop drama.
A voice in focus
Bonnie Tyler grew up in Skewen, Wales, and developed her performing voice in local clubs. Her recording career gathered international momentum with It’s a Heartache in 1977. In the following decade, her collaboration with Jim Steinman brought the theatrical scale of Total Eclipse of the Heart and the 1983 album Faster Than the Speed of Night. Holding Out for a Hero became part of the Footloose soundtrack in 1984.
The most useful starting point is the character of the voice itself. Its textured sound can make a simple phrase feel lived in. Put that sound in a relatively direct setting and the grain becomes the centre of attention; surround it with a dramatic arrangement and it becomes a point of human contact within the spectacle.
The three stories here follow that range without treating one style as a replacement for another. Begin with the direct address of It’s a Heartache, move into the changing scale of Total Eclipse of the Heart, and finish with the sustained urgency of Holding Out for a Hero. The photograph used in this collection documents a later performance in 2016, not the songs’ original recording era.