Bonnie Tyler - "Total Eclipse Of The Heart"

[prenatt1166]

UU-BRU Radio Playlist
[red]For Week Ending September 24, 1983[/red]

(Rank This Week, Last Week, Artist, Title)

01 02 Bonnie Tyler - Total Eclipse Of The Heart
02 06 Asia - Don't Cry
03 03 Billy Joel - Tell Her About It
04 ** Billy Joel - Uptown Girl
05 05 Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton - Islands In The Stream
06 07 B-52's - Legal Tender
07 09 Sheena Easton - Telefone
08 08 Men Without Hats - The Saftey Dance
09 01 Culture Club - I'll Tumble 4 Ya! (remix)
10 10 Air Supply - Making Love Out Of Nothing At All

TEOTH spent 4 weeks at #1, one of 4 number one singles written/produced by Jim Steinman.

For almost 20 years, I believed Bonnie Tyler had the number one single of 1983 on my chart. When I started publishing my year end charts online, I double checked all the points and stats and discovered a 10 point error. The resulting mistake put Bonnie Tyler and TEOTH at #2 for 1983.
www.keystonehighways.com/uubru1983.html

:(

[mst3k]

I love this song... particularly the full-length version (over 7 minutes long). The video was kinda creepy though (that whole "bright eyes" thing).

[jimmy74747]

One of the best songs of the 80's. She has a great voice.

Also we gotta give Jim Steinman credit too. A great songwriter. Sometimesa bit too over the top, but it usually works.

[Deleted]

Very good!

[Vic]

CLASSIC!

One of my top 10 favourites of all time

[automatictlc]

hmmm...i should go listen to this, haven't for a while, i forgot how much I loved this song. :)

[BFMR]

i love this song, always did

[FreakyFlyBry]

I love it!

[reception]

I like it.

[johnnywest]

My #1 song of 1983!

[Ling-Ling]

Classic 80's song. Completely melodramatic, but I love it.

[Michael1973]

Easily one of my favorite songs ever.

Interesting note about this song: though I was a huge fan from it's initial release, I did not hear (or even know about) the full-length version until 1995. Ironically, the Nicki French remake came out very soon afterward, and that version included the verse I'd never known about!

[Keith3000]

Excellent song. The Nicki French remake is also pretty good, but not as good as the original.

[Hervard]

1983 was definitely Jim Steinman's heyday. He had written at least three songs (very possibly even more) that were on the charts in late 1983, two of them huge. Ironically, the two really big ones, Bonnie Tyler's song and Air Supply's "Making Love Out Of Nothing At All" (which I often confused with each other at first) held fown the Top Two positions on the Billboard chart in October, 1983 (but not on R&R, since the Air Supply single only got as high as number three). Another song he had written, "Read 'Em & Weep", done by Barry Manilow, was on the charts, too, and although it didn't do nearly as well as the other two, it did make the Top 20 in January, 1984. That song is by far my favorite of the three songs that I discussed above, but I love the other two as well.
U93 played the full length version with the verse that Nicki French sang in her version ("Nobody in the world that's as magical and wondrous as you"), plus my Dad had the album, so I'd heard the album version plenty of times (though I don't recall that it was seven minutes long!)

[johnnywest]

I bought the cassette single sometime in the late 80s/early 90s after seeing "The History of Music Videos From A-Z" on VH-1. Then I heard it later on CT40 as either an R&D or in a special countdown (top 40 British acts of the 80s) and was surprised at how much it was edited down on radio.

[mst3k]

ulij20 said:

I'd heard the album version plenty of times (though I don't recall that it was seven minutes long!)

My bad... it's only 6:59.

I remember hearing the long version one time as an LDD (or R&D) on Casey's show, probably the only time they ever played it in full... otherwise they just played one of the shorter edits.

[billme]

johnnywest said:

My #1 song of 1983!

Same Here!!!! #2 for the 80's.

I thought she would have more Top 10 hits after this one went to #1. ???

[Hervard]

mst3k1 said:

My bad... it's only 6:59.

I'm surprised it's even that long. I thought it was only about five and a half minutes long.

I remember hearing the long version one time as an LDD (or R&D) on Casey's show, probably the only time they ever played it in full... otherwise they just played one of the shorter edits.

Yeah, I like when Casey occasionally plays longer versions of songs. Like I remember one time either in 1994 or 1995, he played the version of "I Just Called To Say I Love You" by Stevie Wonder, when he synthesized his voice and sang the beginning and end of the first verse ("No New Year's Day to celebrate/no chocolate covered candy hearts to give away/but what it is is something true/made up of these three words that I must say to you). You can hear his synthesized voice echoing the lines of the chorus in some versions of the song, in others it's edited out completely except for the "cha-cha-cha" at the end of the song.
Anyway, Casey doesn't play longer versions very much if at all anymore. But that's cool; it gives him time to play five former #1 songs. Well, except for when he only does four and just repeats the last few verses of certain songs.

[mst3k]

ulij20 said:

I'm surprised it's even that long. I thought it was only about five and a half minutes long.

Nope... you're probably thinking of one of the longer edits that gets played occasionally (I've heard at least three different length edits of the song, with various parts chopped out).

[krazymack]

I'm mostly familiar with the Nikki French version of the song which I liked.

I can't remember the Bonnie Tyler version.

[LordEctar]

krazymack said:

I'm mostly familiar with the Nikki French version of the song which I liked.

I can't remember the Bonnie Tyler version.

I like both of them, but IMO the Nikki French version is far superior.

[reception]

The link I posted on page one of this topic is seven minutes long.

[BFMR]

LordShadow said:

I like both of them, but IMO the Nikki French version is far superior.

that would be like comparing apples to ornages... Bonnie didn't have the technology to computerize her voice the way Nikki did, and (IMO) the computerized voice makes the song lose any feeling it should have

[stevie nice]

mst3k1 said:

Nope... you're probably thinking of one of the longer edits that gets played occasionally (I've heard at least three different length edits of the song, with various parts chopped out).

The single version was 4:30 or so, and it infuriated me when I heard WPLJ in New York play an even shorter version. The original single mix opens with 2 verses before the chorus and they eliminate 1 of them. All to add another 30 seconds in advertising.

As for the song, I love it, one of my favorite 80s pop tracks. She had an earlier hit called "It's A Heartache" which when I was 12 or 13 was on a jukebox at a camp spot I hung out at one summer in upstate NY and we used to play that and the flip side of the single "It's About Time" I think it was called.

[Nicholas2.0]

I heard this a few times in '94/'95 and then Nicki French came out with her version, which overtook any memory I had of the original.

Kind of like with Don Henley and "The Boys of Summer." I only heard that for the first few times in 2000, and since the Ataris came out with their version, I can barely remember Don's anymore. (And I've only heard his once since the Ataris came out with theirs, and I was totally surprised by how slow Don's was.)

[Pet Shop Boy]

One of the most universally popular songs of the 80's I think. Everyone I know loves this. It is surprising she didn't have many more big hits.

[BillboardBoy]

I've always loved this song.

[Chato]

FreakyFlyBry said:

I love it!

[36hzdq51]

Didn't like it. Reminds me of the worst of Janis Joplin.

[Pet Shop Boy]

I've been playing this a lot lately. I love the bit where the singing pauses and the music really gets cranked up to the max. So dramatic!