Songoftheday 2/24/13 - Once upon a time there was light in my life, now there's only love in the dark...

Bonnie Tyler - "Total Eclipse Of The Heart"
from the album Faster Than The Speed Of Night (1983)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (four weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 18

Today's Song of the Day is the companion to yesterday's SOTD by Air Supply, "Making Love Out Of Nothing At All", which songwriter Jim Steinman originally submitted to his protege' Meat Loaf but scuttled over money quarrels. The other song Jim wrote was "Total Eclipse Of The Heart", and like the Air Supply song, used E Street Band's Roy Bittan and Max Weinberg and guitarist Rick Derringer.

The singer chosen for the song is raspy-voiced Welsh woman Bonnie Tyler, who released her first album in 1977, and the first single "Lost In France" became her first top-10 hit in the UK, as well as going to #3 in Germany. After surgery for nodules and the raspiness set in, her second set broke her to American shores, where "It's A Heartache" hit the top of the charts all over the world, including the top-10 of both the pop and country charts in the US. However, after that, she faded pretty much out of sight, save a top-3 hit in France in 1979 with "My Guns Are Loaded".

So Steinman's production of Tyler's fifth set, Faster Than The Speed Of Night came out of nowhere to a huge positive reaction, and "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" becoming her biggest success...

The single reached #1 in America, the UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and South Africa, and in fact, in the US it spent three of its four weeks at #1 with "Making Love Out Of Nothing At All" in the #2 spot, an utter coup for Steinman as a songwriter.The song also reached the top-10 on the adult contemporary chart, and #23 on the rock radio format list.

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Tyler would revisit the song with French singer Kareen Antonn as "Si Demain" and topped the pop chart in that country in 2003...

She also would record the song with Welsh choral group Only Men Aloud!...

The most famous cover of the song was done in 1995 by British singer Nicki French, who transformed it into a HI-NRG epic that went all the way to #2 on the US pop chart, #5 in Britain, and #2 in Australia...

Tori Amos would also perform "Total Eclipse" in concert, and included it in her "bootleg" collection...

Irish boy-band Westlife performed the song on Top of the Pops, even though inexplicably the release of the single was cancelled..

The Dan Band would make this the highlight of their show, and reprise it in the movie Old School...(NSFW)

Taiwanese viral video sensation Lin Yu Chun performed the song with William Shatner (who else?) on the George Lopez show...

In 2010, Glee took on the song with Lea Michele and male cast singing, and was one of the casts' biggest hits, reaching #16 in the US and #9 in England...

A year later, Italian singer L'Aura had a top-5 hit in her country with a translated version of the song...

...and finally I can't not post the hilarious "literal version" of the video that went viral in 2009...

Up tomorrow: Lascivious. and underage. You nasty felines.