How a Nosferatu Musical Reject Became One of the Biggest Power Ballads of the 1980s

When one hears the term “Nosferatu musical,” their minds likely wander to songs full of pipe organ, screeching violins, perhaps a deliciously cheesy creeeak-ing of a coffin door opening—you know, vampire stuff. What doesn’t spring to the front of mind is a chart-topping power ballad from 1983. But then again, maybe they just needed to “turn around” their “bright eyes” before “falling apart.” 

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Know which song it is yet?

The Quintessentially 1983 Power Ballad That Took Over the World

If you hadn’t already started singing the chorus to this ultra-80s power ballad already, the song in question is “Total Eclipse of the Heart”, made famous by Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler. Released in February 1983, the song had all the fixings for a pop hit of the decade: dramatic synth, the histrionic vocal delivery that swells into a full-throated belt by the chorus, the snare, awash with reverb. The song perfectly reflected what was popular at that time, and it paid off.

“Total Eclipse of the Heart” was a worldwide success, topping the charts in the U.K. and the U.S. The track became the fifth-best-selling single in the U.K. in 1983 and landed in sixth place on Billboard’s song-of-the-year list. It also topped the charts or broke into the Top 10 in Ireland, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Peru, Finland, France, Venezuela, Norway, New Zealand, and many, many others.

Needless to say, “Total Eclipse of the Heart” was a universal success, which is all the more surprising when one considers how divisive the original intent for the song was (and that’s coming from a writer whose favorite holiday is Halloween).

The Vampiric Origins of “Total Eclipse of the Heart”

This writer loves Halloween, vampires, and the campy goodness that is buck-toothed Nosferatu as much as the next guy, but they’re certainly not what we would consider “mainstream” interests. Very few songs on the Billboard Hot 100 are songs from vampire musicals. But as Bonnie Tyler explained in a 2023 interview with The Guardian, that’s exactly what “Total Eclipse of the Heart” started out as.

In the early 1980s, Tyler was trying to transition from country rock to rock ‘n’ roll. To do so, she enlisted the help of Jim Steinman, who wrote for and produced Meat Loaf. Tyler had just watched Meat Loaf perform on the Old Grey Whistle Test and wanted to move toward a style similar to “Bat Out of Hell”.

Of the several songs Steinman brought to Tyler to record, he told her one of them was a reject from a musical version of Nosferatu. He never finished the song, so he let Tyler take a swing at it. “Around the time we were recording, Meat Loaf lost his voice, and after it was a hit, he always used to say, ‘Dang. That song should have been mine!’ I poured my heart out singing it.”

Even all these decades later, Tyler said she never tires of “Total Eclipse of the Heart”. “I still get excited when I hear the song on the radio,” she told Good Morning America in 2024. “Every time the eclipse comes, everyone all over the world, they play ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’. I never get tired of signing it.”

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