By Bonnie Tyler, the gravelly voiced, Grammy-nominated Welsh pop star best known for singing the chart-topping power ballad “Total Eclipse of the Heart” in 1983 and seeing new generations succumb to its bombastic charms during solar and lunar eclipses, has died. She was 75.
Tyler died “unexpectedly” in a hospital in Portugal where she was being treated for an illness, her family said Thursday, July 9, in a statement on her website. She was hospitalized in May in Faro, where she had a home, for emergency intestinal surgery and was later placed in an induced coma.
Tyler earned three Grammy nods, represented Britain at the Eurovision Song Contest 2013 — where she came in 19th — and was awarded an MBE for her services to music by Queen Elizabeth II in 2023, all largely thanks to “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” which has had more than 1 billion streams, boosted by real eclipses in 2017 and 2024.
