Bonnie Tyler Biography
The Story of a Broken Voice and an Unbreakable WomanBy Edward Elmer
Length2h
About this audiobook
She was born Gaynor Hopkins in a small Welsh village called Skewen. Her father was a coal miner. Her mother was a homemaker. She grew up in a crowded council house with five siblings, left school at sixteen with nothing on paper, and took a job stacking shelves in a grocery shop.
Nobody would have guessed she would become one of the most recognizable voices in the history of popular music.
This book tells the full story of Bonnie Tyler from beginning to end. The talent contest she didn't win. The smoky nightclubs in Swansea. The name she picked out of a newspaper. The throat surgery that was supposed to heal her voice but instead destroyed it. And the scream in a car that accidentally created the raspy, powerful sound that millions of people around the world would come to know and love.
It covers the years of struggle before the fame. The partnership with Jim Steinman that produced "Total Eclipse of the Heart," one of the biggest songs ever recorded. The Footloose soundtrack. The reinvention in Europe when America stopped calling. The French duet that put her back on top. Eurovision at 62. An MBE from the Crown. A memoir written in her own voice. And a career that never stopped, right up until a hospital room in Portugal in the summer of 2026.
It also tells the story of the woman behind the microphone. Her fifty-three-year marriage to Robert Sullivan, the Olympic judoka who was there before any of it started. The life they built between Wales and Portugal. The family she loved. The privacy she protected. The loyalty and humor that held everything together.
Bonnie Tyler sold millions of records, earned over a billion streams on a single song, and performed on stages across the world for more than five decades. But her story is not really about numbers or charts or awards. It is about a woman who loved to sing and never stopped doing it, no matter what life threw at her.
This is that story. Straight from the heart.
Audiobook details
GenreBiography and Memoir
Length2 hrs
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Front Matter
2Chapter 1 — Coal Dust and Chapel Songs: Skewen, 1951–1969
3Chapter 2 — Sherene Davis and the Swansea Circuit: 1969–1975
4Chapter 3 — Lost in France: The RCA Years, 1975–1977
5Chapter 4 — The Scream That Changed Everything: 1977–1978
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6Chapter 5 — Treading Water: 1979–1982
7Chapter 6 — Total Eclipse: Jim Steinman and the Biggest Song in the World, 1982–1983
8Chapter 7 — Holding Out for a Hero: The Footloose Era, 1984–1986
9Chapter 8 — Bitterblue: Reinvention in Europe, 1988–1999
10Chapter 9 — The French Revival and the Long Road Back: 2000–2012
11Chapter 10 — Eurovision, an MBE, and Refusing to Stop: 2013–2023
12Chapter 11 — Robert, Portugal, and the Life Behind the Voice
13Chapter 12 — The Final Eclipse: Legacy, 2024–2026
14Chapter 13 — Turn Around, Bright Eyes: The Songs That Outlived the Charts
15Chapter 14 — Straight from the Heart: A Final Letter to Bonnie
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