Love, Death, & A Welsh Siren

There's a scene in the movie "High Fidelity" where Rob Gordon is putting his record collection into autobiographical order, and he says he can explain the moves in life that got him from one artist to the next. The steps are not always so easy to see, and I have taken note that much of life can only be understood when looking in the rear-view mirror. I have lost count of how many times I have made a revelation, only to realize my subconscious was well ahead of me on that count. Most of the time, that involves realizing what the music I was drawn to was telling me all along, if I had been able to hear the subtext.

The loss of Bonnie Tyler is one of those moments that makes me stop and realize certain things about me have always been there, and were perhaps immutable. It might not have been luck or happenstance that led to this path, fate (if such a thing exists) had already written those elements in ink upon me.

Bonnie's appeal was obvious to me; she was the voice of several songs from the pen of my musical hero, Jim Steinman. His story was incomplete without Bonnie Tyler, and so mine would be as well. To be without "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" would be to not fully understand Steinman, the 80s, or the very idea of melodrama. His song about vampires finding love in the dark, and wondering if the fires of passion were too bright for them to survive in, worked for me because of the overblown and ridiculous scope of it all. Even as a child, I think part of me realized there was something amiss about my emotions. I needed the exaggeration Steinman brought to the table in order to feel what was supposedly 'normal'.

I would diagnose that issue later on, and 'solve' it with the help of a different singer, although the solution mostly seemed to invite depression among all the options, so we can debate whether I am better off with the knowledge and ability. Steinman's music was my entry point to the human experience, and Bonnie Tyler was absolutely a part of that. She not only delivered songs that spoke to me, she did it with her raspy voice that struck a chord with me. Here's where things get a bit difficult to parse; Did the songs lead me to love rasp, or did rasp lead me to love the songs? I don't know if I can answer that.

I was not thinking about how much Bonnie's voice singing those songs was seeping into my mind, just like I hadn't thought about how much I was obsessed with the sound of "Black Velvet", which I have already written an essay about. If I was more clear-eyed about myself, I would have seen the connection between their voices, and how they were touching my soul in the same spot. It is obvious now that I was sensitive to voices that carried some husk and rasp to them, voices that sounded as weathered as my heart would ultimately become. Perhaps that also explains the crush I had on someone in high school whose speaking voice sounded as if emphysema was an affliction of youth.

Now, it is obvious that Bonnie Tyler and Alanah Myles were prelude to my deepest connection with a human voice, that of Dilana. They all share characteristics that echo in phase with each other, and create a through-line I can trace through decades of life, up to and including Lzzy Hale. Many of the songs and voices that have meant the most to me, that have unknowingly defined my taste and persona, all come from this same stem of the musical flower. If I am to compare myself to a bloom, it only exists as a bulb planted by those seeds.

Bonnie Tyler, through Jim Steinman, is responsible for being the voice behind a statement that sounds rather terrible, but is as much hope as I tend to hold: "Loving you's a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it." That song was another in a line of Steinman's songs turning common phrases into contrary and sarcastic quips, but sometimes comedy is the ultimate form of telling the truth. What has been made clear to me time and again over the years is that love is inexplicable, except for the fact it seems impossible of afflicting some of us. Indeed, I imagine whoever draws the short straw when the timer runs out will be saying that exact thing about me, and I will thank them for the effort.

I did not have any of those thoughts when I started loving Bonnie's rendition of the song. It was an amusing piece of the Steinman oeuvre, but little else. Like everything, only time would reveal to me the obvious backdrop I could not see through the spotlight glare.

When I listen to my favorite Bonnie Tyler songs now, whether they are the Steinman tracks, her versions of "The Best" and "Have You Ever Seen The Rain", or the proto-Bon Jovi of "If You Were A Woman And I Was A Man", what I hear is a nostalgic reminder that at our core we don't change as people. I find that reassuring, because I want to believe the people and the music I love are going to be with me for the rest of my life. To know I have always been drawn to the same energy means perhaps I always will, and that gives me a map to where to look for the next gold rush.

Bonnie Tyler is a part of that story, and for that I am grateful.