Bonnie Tyler has died | Hacker News Reader

Bonnie Tyler has died

bbc.com

Growing up in the 80s, I've known (and sung) this song all my life. But I just saw this flowchart for the first time today:

https://jeannr.tumblr.com/post/165291081/i-made-a-flow-chart...

I believe that's the original source, but it looks cut off. Here's a full version:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b1/82/dc/b182dcc291495c013c98...

That's actually a really interesting visualization of a professionally structured verse.

Not sure why you were downvoted, it is super interesting. I know nothing of songwriting but it seems like that could be read by a singing performer in similarly to how sheet music is read by an instrument performer. In the graph, there's additional information than just the words that a singer would need to perform the song accurately.

/re-iterate i know almost nothing of music except what i like which i've been informed over and over is incorrect hah.

I've been a musician for nearly 3 decades and this diagram is how really good songwriters think about structuring popular music. They just usually don't write it down like this. It's not only useful for lyrics, but for harmonic progression as well. As for the downvotes, it's probably because most here don't understand songwriting and think the diagram was nothing more than a joke.

I think there should be "An Infinite Literature Contest", where the contestants would submit a formal grammar and the texts in the language would be judged for literary and other qualities.

Steinman was a genius. One of the greatest rock composers of all time and he picked his performers brilliantly.

TIL Bonnie Tyler was the female Meat Loaf.

At the time it was pretty obvious, having just come off Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell being played on the radio ten times a day.

I just learned earlier this week that he produced “In The Dark of the Night” from Anastasia!

It doesn't look like the second has been cut off to get the first, because the font is different. It looks like the second was an attempt to extend the first (also, it kills the joke)

Reminds me of when she was on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, and they played a "finish the lyrics" game: https://youtu.be/vl7UfjtLzcQ?t=260

Visual representation is your WORST friend: it will make things LOOK simple even if the real thing required the utter mastery to create.

Look at that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATbMw6X3T40

(or that: https://www.facebook.com/reel/1500354675104013)

Did you know there's a long version? (Of the song, not the flowchart, though another reply has that too)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Svz-W5w2bPM

There's a 7-minute version, with two more verses that aren't in the version you always hear on the radio. The one starting at 3:45 in that video is particularly powerful and chilling.

> Every now and then, I know you'll never be the boy you always wanted to be. But every now and then, I know you'll always be the only boy who wanted me the way that I am. Every now and then, I know there's no one in the universe as magical and wondrous as you. Every now and then, I know there's nothing any better. There's nothing that I just wouldn't do.

Well, I never knew this till now:

> With 'Total Eclipse of the Heart', I was trying to come up with a love song and I remembered I actually wrote that to be a vampire love song. Its original title was 'Vampires in Love' because I was working on a musical of Nosferatu, the other great vampire story. If anyone listens to the lyrics, they're really like vampire lines. It's all about the darkness, the power of darkness and love's place in the dark.

https://genius.com/Bonnie-tyler-total-eclipse-of-the-heart-l...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Eclipse_of_the_Heart

Table for what Meatloaf would and wouldn't do:

https://imgur.com/gallery/ZAQXJdY

Timetable of One Week:

https://imgur.com/gallery/rsvhp2z

Literal music video of Total Eclipse, one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsgWUq0fdKk

RIP Ms Tyler, you will be missed

I like to pretend that was filmed in the Hogwarts sixth form commmon room in the eighties

It pretty much was. It was filmed in a Victorian sanitorium, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holloway_Sanatorium (built 1873-1885) which is in keeping with your (and JK Rowling's) vision of public schools, in particular Hogwarts was modelled on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fettes_College (built 1864-1870) in a similar architectural style.

There’s also one of A-Ha’s “Take on Me”.

“Haaaand comes out…”

Nowhere near as good though.

I think Bad Apple the literal version compares well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReblZ7o7lu4

Safety Dance is up there with the better ones, too.

If you like meta-songs, you may be interested in "Title of this song" by Da Vinci's Notebook:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgmUgFEFzco&list=RDHgmUgFEFz...

I had never seen the music video until the news started playing it. Super funny

Back in 1999, the UK had its first total solar eclipse for several decades and VH1 played the music video (though, not this one ;-)) on loop for an hour while it was happening.

The back story of the writing of Total Eclipse ain't bad either: https://youtu.be/LGqYnj_Y3CI?t=70

That is so great. My wife and i love to annoy our teenage kids by getting Alexa to play this song and then singing along very dramatically haha.

How old are you, for curiosities sake? I'm born early 90s, fondly remembering me and a friend shaming all the rest of our group by singing this song (dramatically as well) as a duet whenever we were in (already loud) public spaces.

I'm 50, i have two boys ages 16 and 14. My wife was more into music than I was growing up (i grew up in rural areas, she grew up in the city). One of my favorite stories she has is helping Modest Mouse unload their van when playing in Dallas at Club Dada (small local venue) back in the 90s. She also has so many cool rave, hiphop, and sxsw stories from that era since she went to HS in Arlington TX (class of '95), UT for college, and then lived in NYC for a while dating a musician. Austin in the mid/late 90s was a very special place to be a young person.

Sony tried so hard to kill this when it was new

I'm glad this is still on the Internet. It's exactly the sort of thing that almost never is, when I try to find it again several years after seeing it the first time.

I came here to post this, glad you beat me to it. I pulled a muscle laughing the first time I saw this.

I once worked with a guy mixing TV programmes and live DVDs; I knew he’d been a studio engineer at one point in his career. We were re-arranging our studios one day and as I picked up a pair of NS-10s he casually said “I mixed ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ on those…”

Did he mean on a set of NS10s or on THOSE NS10s?

The exact same NS10s!

I went to the Reading Rock Festival back in the 80s. she was viewed very much as middle of the road and when she came on, got roundly booed and many bottles of nefarious liquids were tossed at her and the band.

she and they were total pros, shrugged it off, she hurled some abuse back and within a couple of songs had the crowd eating out of the palm of her hand.

RIP Bonnie. A class act.

My mum had a cassette with some of her songs. We'd have it on for long trips. I loved the long version of Faster than the speed of night. it's basically just "carpe diem" in a different format, but i loved her voice and the slight melancholy and almost call to action that the song brought with it. Also, the video (of the shorter version) is peak 80's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm4CgwRxw3Y

Jim Steinman, Meat Loaf, and now Bonnie Tyler. It truly all has come to an end. I think Celine Dion is the last one still carrying on Steinman's legacy.

Her, and the dude from Sisters of Mercy.

This broke my heart:

> Despite coming from a big, musical family, Tyler and Sullivan never had children.

> I absolutely adore children.

> I did have a miscarriage when I was 40, I left it too late, you know?

I feel like, if you get into that situation, try to adopt or become a foster parent.

And let us not forget "Holding Out For a Hero"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWcASV2sey0

Where have all the good men gone and where are all the gods?

Is it too much to ask for a Streetwise Hercules?

'fraid so, the odds have risen too high.

We might need a white night on a fiery steed. One can dream.

Featured towards the climax of Short Circuit 2, which was huge in my childhood. What a powerhouse piece of music!

Yes, I will never fail to associate this music with Short Circuit 2, it is also burned into my childhood memory.

I think of that movie every time I hear the song! That was one badass robot sequence.

"Suuuuure. Kidnap the humans, DESTROY THE MACHINE."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LABMISLl7Y8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTdHPAY7rOE

"Number 5 is alive!"

I love this. So many more people associate it with Shrek these days, so all the Johnny 5 comments warm my heart!

Is it wrong that I prefer the Shrek version?

It's not. I prefer the bardcore version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx-x_1lIXh4

Fun fact: the original was only produced in English but the Shrek remix (which is a *BOP*) got translated into every language the movie did.

Absolute classic. If anyone is interested, the Footloose soundtrack (which has Holding Out For a Hero on it) is probably one of the greatest soundtracks of all time. The movie sucks but damn, this soundtrack is incredible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footloose_(1984_soundtrack)

Agree and disagree. Love the movie. Hate the remake. But the OST is really great. We can agree on that.

Jellybean long version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4Wq3U86SyQ

Another brilliant Jim Steinman song

My two-year-old son had started saying "turn around" in a sing-song kind of way several months back, and thus my wife and I, both babies of the 80s, had to start singing the song whenever he would do it. It became a fun thing that my son enjoys more than we do. That turned into regularly playing this song (and its covers) in the living room. We just did this again a few nights ago because he loves the song so much and requests it now.

RIP Bonnie.

"Strong Songs" podcast breaking down Total Eclipse of The Heart: https://strongsongspodcast.com/blogs/episodes/s07e06-total-e...

It seems to be a little known fact that she was... The Best: https://youtube.com/watch?v=LKV5YAxwv3Q

While she didn't compose the song, she was the one to originally release it. Tina Turner's version came one year later with a sax and an iconic video, but otherwise Bonnie's version is pretty similar and not much worse imo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_(song)#Bonnie_Tyler_v...

Ugh, what a bummer. I'll be listening to Holding Out for a Hero on repeat today. Nothing gold can stay.

Too soon, she could have had a lot more life left to live these days, but a bad surgery ended it. Sucks. Try to avoid needing surgery as much as you can.

Little by little, memories of the 1980s fade.

Sadly, Jim Steinman passed away half a decade ago:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Steinman

I still want to see the dream realized on Broadway of a Native-American inspired musical.

"Every now and then, I get a little bit nervous That the best of all the years have gone by"

Tears in rain, etc.

For those into metal: I like this cover by Exit Eden: https://youtu.be/AD6VAZFHWLY

Also can highly recommend the Dan Band version of Total Eclipse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIRiZsDObrU

"It's a Heartache" is a very moving song. RIP.

+1 - one of my favorite songs of all time. Rod Stewart-esque than Stewart himself on this one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonnie_Tyler

Just as good a time as ever to post one of my favorite classic deep YouTube video's, Hurra Torpedo's cover of Total Eclipse of the Heart.

Slightly NSFW, some plumber's crack:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysUjYAi0WcQ

And this is another good time to remember Jim Steinman, the genius who brought us "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and many of Meatloaf's greatest hits.

https://jimsteinman.com/charts.htm

Celine Dion, Air Supply.

Bonnie Tyler's Holding Out for a Hero. This list goes on. The guy was a prolific rock composer genius.

The version from the wedding band in Old School will forever be in my mind.

https://youtu.be/FfUU1wJKXDc

...every nah'n'then I get a little bit terrified, I see the fuckin look in your eyes

I saw her around this time last year in munich... it was a great show and even tough i didn't grow up in the 80's im a fan! Rest in Peace Bonnie!

That's sad. She had such a distinct, unique voice.

That sucks, man. I actually liked her music. Especially "holding out for a hero".

RIP legend.

I'm curious now when this was announced. Yesterday, out of nowhere, TikTok showed me a video about someone praising "Total Eclipse of the Heart", despite not having this bubble in my profile. Kinda spooky to see the news now.

Probably one of those coincidences, like you talked about bouncy houses and now you’re seeing ads for bouncy houses

her hit song, along with the nikki french dance remix have been on my coding playlist for 30yrs!

I discovered her wider music during the early days of COVID. I played her album Faster Than The Speed of Night on repeat. No world-class lyrics but she had such a beautiful unique voice, I got hooked.

I can't listen to her music now without being taken straight back to the hours and days lying alone on the sofa hoping for better days.

RIP you Welsh beaut

This isn't hacker news... but whatever i guess.

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