We interrupt our scheduled programming for a tribute to Bonnie Tyler, who died on Wednesday. Those of you waiting with bated breath for the Cancel Culture Club postscript... it'll be here next week, I promise. But Bonnie takes priority.
Regular readers of this nonsense will know that I'm a huge fan of the overblown melodramatic glory of Jim Steinman. Nobody has stretched the pure essence of the rock n roll mythos to such wonderfully ludicrous extremes, and in Meat Loaf, Jim found the perfect voice for his theatrical, sturm und drang histrionics.
However, there were times when Meat just wasn't available. Either because he'd knackered his voice from all that bawling... or because he and Jim weren't quite seeing eye to eye. When that happened, Jim tried singing the tunes himself... but most people agreed he wasn't quite up to the job... and that's when he discovered Bonnie Tyler.
Up until then, Welsh chanteuse Gaynor Sullivan had been carving about a pretty decent career singing reasonably average tunes like Lost In France and It's A Heartache. I'm guessing Jim must have heard one of these, because in 1983 he offered her a song written for Meat which looked like it wasn't ever going to get recorded. And the rest is history...
Other Steinman / Tyler collaborations followed - not all of them hits, but all of them amazing.
Winnipeg punk band The Washups pay tribute to the latter of those here...
And here are a few more lyrical tributes...
And I'm not Bonnie Tyler, and I'm not Toni Braxton
And this song is not gonna save your relationship
Losing Bonnie Tyler will be accepted by many people as just another dead star... but for me, after saying goodbye to both Jim and Meat not so long ago, this feels like the end of an era. Still, given the grand mythology of angels and devils, heaven and hell that they all dabbled in... I like to think they'll be re-united and singing with the seraphim as we speak.
We'll close today with another Steinman/Tyler favourite, this one featuring Todd Rundgren on guest vocals...
Rest in peace, Bonnie. You were magnificent.
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