40 years ago: "Total Eclipse of the Heart" tops the charts

[Ali Gator]

40 years ago this week, Jim Steinman's opus "Total Eclipse of the Heart" - recorded by Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler - began a four week run on top of the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart, and the 6th best selling single for 1983 . The song also topped the UK Charts, becoming the 5th  best-selling single for 1983, and won the 'Variety Club Award' for Best Single in the UK. The song topped the charts in Ireland, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, and South Africa. At its peak, the record was selling 60,000 copies a day around the world, and 6 million in total.The song was 'radio edited' to 4:30, down from the album track (and 12" single) of 7:00. Though CBS records wanted to release the full album version, Tyler thought an edit would be better for radio. (In the second spot was Air Supply's "Making Love Out of Nothing At All", which Tyler later recorded in 1995).

 

According to Tyler, she wanted to sign up with songwriter / producer Steinman when she went to CBS Records in 1983, after hearing his recordings with singer Meat Loaf on his 1977 hit album 'Bat Outta Hell'. When she met him at his Manhattan apartment in early 1983, he gave her a few songs he thought would be great for the album (she wasn't totally convinced, but recorded them anyhow) and then presented her with 'Total Eclipse...' , believing this would be the hit single and the first single. After its successful release, Meat Loaf - who worked consistently with Steinman - said in interviews that Steinman originally wrote the song for him, for Meat Loaf to record the song for his 1983 album "Midnight At The Lost and Found", but he passed on the song, claiming he didn't like it. (Steinman then debunked what was said, and reiterated Tyler's claim that he wrote the song just for her, and it was not leftover from ML's album).

 

The video was filmed on location at the Holloway Sanatorium, a large Victorian Gothic hospital near Virginia Water, Surrey, England. It features Tyler clad in white, dreaming or fantasizing about students in a boys' boarding school. Young men are seen dancing and participating in various school activities and singing in a choir. Though the video has not held up well over the years, the single certainly has for the past 40 years. During the 2017 solar eclipse, the song recorded a 503% increase in sales. The "literal video'' has scored nearly six million views since its release on YouTube. 

 

 

 

[samhexum]

On 10/2/2023 at 5:48 PM, Ali Gator said:

40 years ago this week

44 years to the minute before you posted this I was on my way into Manhattan to see ABBA at Radio City Music Hall.  Try not to be too jealous!

[Ali Gator]

"I'm swaying side to side, these dancers need to stop

The gayest man on earth would call this 'over the top' " 

 

😄