Hands Down This Is The Most Heartbreaking Love Song Of The '80s

The 1980s was arguably the decade of big break-up ballads, with the upper echelons of the charts dominated by huge hits focused on love and heartbreak. But which is the best of the bunch, the biggest tearjerker of the decade? We agree that there are scores to choose from, including such works of beauty as Joy Division's tragic "Love Will Tear Us Apart," a moody 1980 masterpiece that becomes even more heartbreaking in the light of singer Ian Curtis' death the year of its release. We're also fans of U2's "With or Without You," a soaring ballad that was a massive hit in 1987.

However, the truth is that there is one song that stands above all others, one that we think is undeniably the biggest break-up ballad of the 1980s: Bonnie Tyler's timeless "Total Eclipse of the Heart," a 1983 smash that has lost little of its power in the last four decades. Sure, it may not be the coolest choice we could have made, but we think you'll soon agree that it fits the bill for the most heartbreaking 1980s song.

Bonnie Tyler makes an unlikely pop star. In the late 1970s, as she was finding her feet as a singer, she was forced to undergo an operation to remove nodules on her vocal cords. The procedure permanently altered her voice, leaving the baby-faced singer with an unusually raspy, gravelly vocal style. It might have been enough to put other singers off performing altogether, but somehow Tyler made it work, and it became her trademark, giving her a new gravitas with which to tackle big, emotive songs.

"Total Eclipse of the Heart" was written by Tyler's producer Jim Steinman, the talent behind much of the music of fellow big-voiced singer Meat Loaf. Steinman's background was, perhaps unsurprisingly, in musical theater, which explains his talent for bombastic songwriting infused with crowd-pleasing emotion. The famous lyric from "Total Eclipse of the Heart," "Turn around bright eyes," actually first appeared in an early Steinman theater piece called "Dream Machine."

Tyler had only just started working with Steinman, who agreed to be her producer after the two connected over a shared appreciation of his favorite songs, after which he offered her "Eclipse." "He told me he had started writing the song for a prospective musical version of Nosferatu years before, but never finished it," Tyler told The Guardian in 2023. "Around the time we were recording, Meat Loaf had lost his voice, and after it was a hit he always used to say: 'Dang. That song should have been mine!' I poured my heart out singing it." We're fans of Meat Loaf, sure, but would "Total Eclipse of the Heart" have been as effective with his vocals center stage instead of Tyler's? Somehow, we doubt it.

Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" hit record store shelves in February 1983, and was soon dominating the charts in the U.S., U.K., and a host of other countries. In the U.S., it sat atop the Billboard Hot 100 for four weeks, and its strange, symbolist video was a fixture on MTV for decades. 

Since then, the song has gone down in history as one of the most distinctive power ballads of the '80s, with a unique atmosphere created by Steve Margoshes' exceptional keyboard work. However, we attribute much of the song's emotional effectiveness to Tyler's vocal performance; though overblown and theatrical, she delivers the lyrics with real, heartrending emotion, elevating the ballad to something truly transcendent. Though "Total Eclipse of the Heart" has since become a karaoke favorite the world over, the layers of irony through which many listeners now enjoy the song do little to dim the effectiveness of Tyler's vocals. As far as we're concerned, hear it at just the right juncture in your life, and it still has the power to break your heart.