June 8, 1951 - July 8, 2026
Born Gaynor Hopkins in Skewen, South Wales, Bonnie Tyler grew up in a household full of music. Her father, Glyn Hopkins, worked in the local coal mines, while her mother, Elsie, a keen opera lover, filled the house with records. Tyler's earliest musical influences included Motown and the powerhouse female vocalists of the era, especially Janis Joplin and Tina Turner.
Tyler got her first taste of performing when she entered a local talent contest, finishing second and walking away with a prize of just £1. It was enough to light a spark: From the age of 17 she became a fixture on the South Wales club scene, first with Bobby Wayne and the Dixies and later with her own soul group called Imagination.
Tyler was discovered by talent scout Roger Bell, who had come to Wales to listen to a different act. "He came from London to listen to a male singer he had been told about, but as there were two floors in the night club, he walked in and heard me singing instead," Tyler recalled. "That was the beginning."
When Roger Bell discovered her, Tyler was performing at the time under the stage name Sherene Davis (she disliked her birth name Gaynor Hopkins), which she borrowed from her niece's first name and a favorite aunt's surname. However, when she signed her record deal with RCA Records, the label told her that Sherene "sounded like a belly dancer" and pushed for another change.
So Tyler took a broadsheet newspaper and made two lists - first names on one side, surnames on the other - and worked through the combinations until something clicked. "I sifted through them and eventually settled on Bonnie Tyler. It turned out to be a fantastic choice," she told BBC Wales. Despite the two reinventions, her family and friends have always known her simply as Gaynor.
Tyler married Robert Sullivan on July 4, 1973, when she was still performing on the local club circuit; they have remained together ever since. Sullivan is a property developer and former nightclub manager in Swansea, but perhaps his most remarkable credential is that he competed in judo at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Tyler's debut hit, "
Lost in France," came in 1976 after a publisher spotted her and asked her to record the song. But fans who know her later work might struggle to recognise the voice. "It's like a different girl, isn't it?"
she admitted to The Daily Telegraph in 2013. "I have to say, mind, I was shy in those days, and I was intimidated in the studio and the real me didn't come through." The trademark rasp was still nowhere to be heard.
Just as "Lost in France" was giving Tyler her first taste of chart success, she developed nodules on her vocal cords and had surgery to remove them. When Tyler returned to the studio six months later to record "It's a Heartache," everything had changed. "I was nervous as hell. When I opened my mouth to sing, everybody in the recording booth went 'Uh? What?' But they liked it, so I carried on." The operation had gifted her one of the most distinctive voices in pop.
"
Total Eclipse Of The Heart" - Tyler's biggest hit, which went to # in both the UK and US in 1983 - was written by Jim Steinman specifically as a showcase for her voice. What fewer fans know is that the song began life as a vampire love song. Steinman described it as "really about vampire lines" and told interviewers it was originally entitled "Vampires in Love," conceived as a tribute to the 1922 film
Nosferatu.
"Total Eclipse of the Heart" helped her album
Faster Than the Speed of Night debut at # 1 in the UK and sell over a million copies.
Tyler represented the United Kingdom at the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest in Malmo, Sweden, performing "
Believe In Me." She finished 19th out of 26 entries with 23 points.
Bonnie and her husband Robert built up an impressive property portfolio, including farmland in both Portugal and New Zealand and a substantial number of houses and stables in England. Tyler was matter-of-fact about it: "It's all about good investments. I don't do drugs so [the money] doesn't go up my nose," she told Reader's Digest.
Bonnie Tyler died in Portugal on July 8, 2026, aged 75. She had been in intensive care for weeks after undergoing emergency surgery for a perforated intestine in late April and being placed in a medically induced coma.
