Bonnie Tyler

Gaynor Hopkins was born in June 1951 and raised in the village of Skewen, just outside Swansea in Wales. Her mother (an excellent singer herself) surrounded the family with music. When she left school at 16, she went to work in a greengrocer’s, and it was when she won a talent contest at her local rugby club in 1969 that she became a full-time vocalist at Swansea’s Townsmen Club.

From there she joined a vocal group called Bobby Wade and the Dixies.

Early in 1976, songwriter Ronnie Scott travelled to Swansea to see and listen to Gaynor (who was then working under the name “Sherene”), having heard about her through a mutual friend.

He agreed to manage her, but made her change her name (arguing that “Sherene” sounded like the name of a belly dancer).

As Bonnie Tyler, she first hit the pop scene late in 1976. Her debut 7″ release was My! My! Honeycomb but it was the follow-up single Lost In France which provided her first chart hit.

Her 1977 single It’s a Heartache reached #4 on the UK Singles Chart, and #3 on the US Billboard Hot 100.

In the 1980s, Tyler ventured into rock music with songwriter and producer Jim Steinman, famous for his collaborations with Meat Loaf.

Steinman wrote Tyler’s biggest hit, Total Eclipse of the Heart, the lead single from her 1983 UK chart-topping album Faster Than the Speed of Night. Steinman also wrote Tyler’s other major 1980s hit Holding Out for a Hero.

Bonnie represented the United Kingdom at the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest in Malmö, Sweden, with Believe in Me. She was awarded an MBE in 2022 for services to music.

Tyler died, aged 75, on 8 July 2026 in hospital in Portugal, where she was being treated for an illness. She had undergone emergency intestinal surgery in May, after which she was placed in an induced coma for a while, and had remained very unwell in intensive care.