Bonny Tyler's Total Eclipse Of The Heart: classic or dud?

Julio to thread on how Busted should be using D Bailey and K Rowe's guitars.

Diane Warren killed off the windswept epic ballad - definitely the Michael Ray to Jim Steinman's Howard Hawks.

OTfuckingM (and Marcello's right about Stripped as well though Dan is correct that "Make Over" is genius, very demented genius. Alas, there is nothing else on the album quite so good or gone, though "Beautiful" is sure as hell trying to be Jim Steinman, which takes us back to the subject of the thread, and said Bonnie Tyler song is great and the video is weird as hell).

TEOTH is an abolute classic. i second ned's comment about the video...

strangest punctuation ever: they put a comma in the pause in the firt line, but then fail to put one after 'keep' in the last.

Another vote for TEOTH being stone cold classic.

A friend of mine gave me the disc, Faster than the Speed of Night as a housewarming present in 1996. It gets an annual airing at least.

http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drd800/d809/d80967c3i9w.jpg

Now, "Wishing You Were Here" by Chicago...

Bollocks to that and bollocks to anyone who like TEOTH and *not* 'Beautiful'.

I am anticipating a ludicrous powerballad for The Darkness Christmas single.

I recently gained an appreciation for "Keep On Loving You" based on its appearance in, of all things, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, where (if memory serves) it's in rotation on the "Emotion FM" station. I'd never really listened to it in detail before, and it struck me how weird, airless, and alien the production is. Sonically, its as synthetic as anything Kraftwerk ever released: it's got this total untouched-by-human-hands vibe. The vocals and guitars have been run through a million different delays, harmonizers, and compressers, until everything becomes this huge, reverbing whooooosh. Of course there's zero low-end (perfect for AM radio.) In short, it's a work of genius. I still hate the fuck out of Journey, though.

A good way to work out how TEOTH is great is to listen to it next to Jennifer Rush's "The Power Of Love".

Oh, Enrique, the Beta Band were not being sardonic or ironic in appropriating the TEOTH quote, and Steinman himself approved it. And "Beautiful" is a stinking assortment of Clinton Card cliches sung nasally by a pretend anorexic, so bollocks to you too, sir.

(so much for the Oxford FAP then!)

Re. J Rush "Power Of Love"; influenced very clearly by Ultravox's "Vienna" which itself was influenced very clearly by Scott Walker's "The Electrician." Is there a theory here somewhere about the gradual dilution of "difficult" music before people will buy it?

x-post: sorry for not being a 'right-thinking person'.

yes!!

and we all know about the More Than A Feeling/Smells Like Teen Spirit interface (via Debaser?).

I have to say I re-discovered 'Keep On Loving You' by REO Speedwagon when Mark Kozelek & his merry Red House Painters covered it. Like all his covers, it is twisted and lovely.

(so much for the Oxford FAP then!)

Ow, fuck, yeah probably, then -- NME readers I knew (=me) didn't know that. I still think their versh stinks; as for Xtina, oh come now we can't be slagging power ballads for their lyrical infelicities! + I know nothing of singing technique, so point conceded, but I quite like the idea of being a 'pretend anorexic' -- wearing baggy clothes in a kind of double-bluff, that's quite good.

I'm a miss the FAP anyway cos I'm in the big smoke watching some old new bollox about the red brigade and/or robbing all yourn houses. Might send a ringer.

Quite right. Listening to "Any Way You Want It" on my iPod recently gave me the sudden realization that said song trumps (in retrospect) both the Electric Six and Andrew WK at their own game, all at once.

Soulseek must have a conscience after all, electing to spare you from the sonic blight that is the Speedwagon's excretion.

Great song, and I guess everyone's already seen awesome cover of it.

I liked the Eurodance cover version of this song too. Actually, I think there were two Eurodance covers of it back in the nineties, but the first one was better.

The Hurra Torpedo version is of course classic.

They actually did this as part of a project where they would "slaughter" various not-too-credible songs, mostly Norwegian language ones. But it's this cover version that has stuck and gotten international attention.

oulseek must have a conscience after all, electing to spare you from the sonic blight that is the Speedwagon's excretion.

I suppose it's statements like this that get me in trouble.

"It's a Heartache" is so much of a better song than this wanna-be Meatloaf song.

Just because Ronnie Scott co-wrote it doesn't make it so.

*yadadadadadadah!IREALLYNEEDYOUTONIGHT!*

It occurs to me that one day Kanye will fully remake the video if not the song. And maybe both.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=840B27zYfOk

Then again, Flight of the Conchords has already been there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vQuf49Ya30

I'm concerned of what this says about me, but I fell semi-in love with a girl while slow dancing to TEOTH the other night. Jeez.. I've always liked the song, but only in the usaual ironic, waxing 80s nostalgia kind of way. But for a moment that night, all of that was gone, and what was left was the sheer power of that gigantic ballad. I may have been fooled, manipulated, whatever, but it felt pretty fucking great.

Classic.

so you're trying to say that forever's gonna start tonight

this song reminds me of my mom

At this second someone is singing this in a karaoke bar.

xpost

Well, it depends on the girl, I suppose

"the sheer power of that gigantic ballad"

That why this song is freaking awesome and will rule forever. I hear it's out on Rock Band. Must investigate. Classic classic classic.

wow, don't know what drugs i was on 7 years ago as i re-read my posts and was shocked at how sounded snotty and dismissing i sounded,

love the song,

turn around bright eyes is brilliant and will feed into another post

Hero

39 years on and I still can't explain this pic.twitter.com/y3RY9Z51bz

— Bonnie Tyler (@BonnieTOfficial) September 20, 2022

dud atp

Madness

It is one of the most perfectly overwrought songs ever written and performed. Total classic.

I love Total Eclipse of the Heart. I had never paid it any attention, until this one time I was trying to get over a rough breakup and it came on the radio in the IHOP I was working at. I had to conceal actual tears while slinging pancakes. Very overwrought and cheesy, but it hit me like a missile.

Haven't knowingly listened to the rest of her music, except in the course of doing research for the Givin' It All You Got thread, when I came across this 1990 song of hers from German action sports film Fire, Ice, and Dynamite:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nlWeTL4dtk

<3 lovely post

absolute classic btw, especially for drunk karaoke

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsgWUq0fdKk

When I was in high school a dance troupe came through to perform for the entire school. The lead dancer gracefully danced until one by one, her skills faltered as she shared a dance with different partners. Each partner was dressed completely in black and had a different word written on their back. ALCOHOL. MARIJUANA. COCAINE. HEROIN.

She eventually fell to the ground, at which point the blacked-out dancers lifted her up and placed in a Jesus Christ crucifix pose to the audience.

This entire performance was done to “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”

Wish I'd been there!

lol, that's amazing.

xxp this isn't the one i witnessed but holy moly they were doing this bit in front of 5 year olds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoRL-xzdlVI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl5PLKr-Zcc