More than four decades after its release, Total Eclipse of the Heart remains one of the most recognizable songs in music history. The soaring power ballad has racked up well over a billion streams and returned to the charts during solar eclipses, becoming a karaoke staple across the world.
However, despite being forever associated with the song, its original artist reportedly earned very little from its phenomenal long-term success. The reason lies in the fact that Bonnie Tyler, the Welsh singer whose distinctive voice made the song famous, did not write it.
Jim Steinman, the legendary songwriter behind Meat Loaf's I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That) and Celine Dion's It's All Coming Back to Me Now, originally wrote the song for a stage adaptation of Nosferatu and conceived it as a gothic love story between vampires.
The song was never intended to become an 80s pop classic, but its original title, Vampires in Love, was eventually changed to Total Eclipse of the Heart. Steinman explained that the lyrics are "really like vampire lines," and the song is all about "the darkness, the power of darkness and love's place in the dark."
When Tyler first heard the song, she had no idea about its supernatural origins. Steinman played it for her on the piano in New York, and she was immediately drawn to its emotional power.
Initially, Tyler wasn't convinced that anyone else would feel the same way about the song, especially since its original version was eight minutes long. However, radio stations disagreed, and after the track was cut down for airplay, it shot to number one in both the UK and the US, becoming one of 1983's defining hits and cementing Tyler as an international star.
The song also came with one of music's greatest sliding-doors moments. Steinman had originally hoped longtime collaborator Meat Loaf would record it, but after vocal issues prevented that from happening, the song landed in Tyler's hands instead.
Even though Total Eclipse of the Heart made Bonnie Tyler an 80s icon, financially, it never truly belonged to her. As the song's writer, Steinman received a large cut of the royalties, meaning that the money generated from streaming, radio play, and countless cover versions largely flowed elsewhere rather than to the woman whose voice made the song famous.
