Bonnie Taylor, the singer of ’Total Eclipse’ fame, has died

Bonnie Taylor, the popular Welsh pop star and songwriter of the 1980s, has died. The singer, who gained worldwide fame through her voice, died in hospital on Wednesday (July 8) night. She was 75 years old at the time of her death.

According to the report of the media outlet The Guardian, citing the singer's social media Facebook page, Bonnie's family and band members said that Bonnie was undergoing treatment for an illness. In this condition, she died unexpectedly last night (Wednesday) in a hospital in Portugal.

Earlier, in May, she underwent emergency intestinal surgery in a hospital near Faro, Portugal. At that time, she was placed in a coma to aid her recovery. Then, after being brought out of the coma, a representative said that the singer Bonnie is now very ill and is in intensive care.

According to Reuters, Bonnie's voice was hoarse, which made her stand out. However, this was largely an accident. After surgery to remove a vocal cord nodule in 1977, she was advised to take her voice out of singing. But one day she screamed in anger. This permanently changed her voice.

About six years after this incident, the singer released her most popular song, "Total Eclipse of the Heart." Which brought her raspy voice to the world and was nominated for a Grammy Award.

Shortly after, another dramatic rock ballad, "Holding Out for a Hero," was released. The song helped Bonnie establish herself in the British pop scene. Both songs were later used in various films, television shows and advertisements.

Shy Bonnie Taylor:
Bonnie was born in South Wales in 1951. Her real name was Gaynor Hopkins. Her father was a coal miner and her mother was a housewife. She was the fourth of six children in her family. She grew up in a four-bedroom council house in Skewen, outside Swansea. In 2012, she told the press that it was very difficult for my parents to support such a large family on a very small income.

Bonnie went to see a musical show at her local church when she was just seven years old. There, she fell in love with Irving Berlin's song "There's No Business Like Show Business". From then on, she wanted to perform. She wrote in her memoir "Straight from the Heart", "I was very shy by nature. But deep down I had a strong desire to sing in front of people."

Bonnie began her career as a backing singer as a teenager. She released several albums of her own in the 1970s, but in the early 1980s she achieved commercial success after working with American songwriter Jim Steinman.

It is known that Bonnie impressed Steinman, who was famous for writing the lyrics for Meat Loaf's "Bat Out of Hell," by sending him a demo of her theatrical rock song. Later, Bonnie said of the moment she first heard Steinman's "Total Eclipse," "I knew this was the song I'd been waiting for my whole life." The song topped the charts in the UK and the US.

The star's song, with powerful lyrics like "Once Upon a Time, I Was Falling in Love, But Now I'm Only Falling Apart," has been streamed more than a billion times on Spotify.

Becoming Bonnie Taylor:
Since the 1990s, the star has enjoyed greater success in Norway, Austria, and France than in her home country. However, she represented Britain in the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest and was awarded the Order of the British Empire for her services to music in 2022.

In 1973, Bonnie married her first lover, property developer Robert Sullivan. 40 years later, she said, "I still love him very much and he loves me too." The couple had no children.

The musician never liked her birth name. "Bonnie Taylor" is her pseudonym. She explained the reason for choosing this name, "I took a magazine and wrote down all the names in one list and the surnames in another. I went through them all and came up with the name "Bonnie Taylor"; it's a great name.