My 100 Favorite Charted Pop Songs: Total Eclipse of the Heart

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In the countdown, it’s just 74 days until spring training!!! There are also 15 songs left on each side of this dual countdown of favorite songs to make the charts. Yesterday the rock song was sort of a power ballad. Today’s is a no-doubt-about-it power ballad. Total Eclipse of the Heart - Bonnie Tyler Jim Steinman had a knack for writing rock operas. He was behind the Meat Loaf albums (most of them, anyway), and he wrote “Read ‘Em and Weep” (which Meat Loaf did first before Barry Manilow wimped it up) and “Making Love Out of Nothing At All” (which Bonnie Tyler covered in the 90s, a far better version if you ask me). While Manilow and Air Supply were looking for some gonads in their music, Bonnie Tyler didn’t need that. Her first US hit, after all, was “It’s a Heartache,” where a lot of people compared her voice to Rod Stewart’s. This isn’t anything like that, except for being an exceptional display for her voice. Sometimes I think I might have liked to hear Meat Loaf do this, but most of the time I say no, this is Bonnie Tyler’s song for all time. Total Eclipse of the Heart Written by Jim Steinman Recorded by Bonnie Tyler From Faster Than the Speed of Night, 1983 Peak chart position: #1 Today’s country song “Waltz of the Angels” Every now and then I fall apart: