You might not necessarily like it, and it’s often not the sort of thing you like at all, but it won’t go away; as Kylie proved – literally – with Can’t Get You Out Of My Head. But long before that there was Total Eclipse Of The Heart. And 43 years later it’s still there.

 

On the one hand, it’s a ludicrously overblown, melodramatic epic (thanks largely to producer Jim Steinman) that takes forever to get going – arguably the template for the entire Power Ballad genre to come. On the other… what a tune!

 

You couldn’t get it out of your head to such an extent that even today, if someone says the phrase “Every now and then,” my mind immediately flashes to Bonnie Tyler, with her big hair and even bigger voice, bellowing out that tune.

 

So much so that it’s easy to forget she had a bunch of other hits, starting with Lost In France. And while not as much of an earworm, it can still come to mind if I am ever in need of directions across the Channel.

 

Then there was the country-adjacent It’s A Heartache, an apt genre for a girl who was, like Loretta Lynn before her, a coal miner’s daughter – albeit one from Neath rather than the Appalachians.

 

I confess I rather liked it at the time, though I would never have admitted it in 1977 when I was far more interested in the Pistols and the Clash and the Ramones.

 

Perhaps because of that, I had no idea she had had a go at Creedence’s song Have You Ever Seen The Rain, which was not quite a hit in the same year, 1983, as Total Eclipse Of The Heart.

 

Producer Jim Steinman gives the song a new arrangement, led by the trademark piano of Roy Bittan alongside fellow E Street Band drummer Max Weinberg, and a histrionic guitar solo by Rick Derringer.

 

Then there is the truly bizarre country-house video that seems to have nothing at all to do with rain (or the stopping of it), but has a strong Eighties vibe – a window smashing, a glass of red wine that seems to be in the middle of a field suddenly exploding – that reminds me of the one for Vienna by Ultravox.

 

I love the way Bonnie tackles the song, achieving the near-impossible by out-rasping John Fogerty, and dialling up her characteristic no-holding-back approach as the song builds to a squealy-guitar-aided climax.

 

It’s easy to imagine Gaynor Hopkins bringing the house down in those rowdy rugby clubs and working men’s clubs in South Wales before she was discovered and brought to London to become a star.

 

I never realised that her husky rasp only came about after she had recorded her first album – and her first two hits, Lost In France and More Than A Lover – when she developed polyps and needed surgery on her vocal cords.

 

I wonder whether she ever got up and entertained holidaymakers in her retirement home of Faro, though she never retired – she showcased a brand new song when she performed at a sold-out Shepherd’s Bush Empire in March this year (2026).