Bonnie Tyler credits Tina Turner for helping the star regain her confidence as her chart success began to fade in the late 1980s.
The singer, who released her 18th LP, ‘The Best is Yet to Come’ earlier this year, arrived on the music scene in 1977 with her debut album, ‘The World Starts Tonight’, and later soared to the top of the UK charts with ‘Faster Than the Speed of Night’ and its single, Total Eclipse of the Heart, in 1983.
While follow-up album, ‘Secret Dreams and Forbidden Fire’, saw similar success off the back of lead single, Holding Out for a Hero, in 1986, it marked the end of Bonnie’s UK chart success for many years.
Speaking exclusively to Retro Pop, the star reflects on her 1988 album, ‘Hide Your Heart’, admitting she struggled to understand the poor response to lead single The Best – which later became an international hit for Tina Turner.
However, through covering the track, Tina helped restore Bonnie’s “confidence” in her musical choices, with the It’s a Heartache star calling the cover version “fantastic”.
“I recorded The Best two years before Tina Turner. I actually thought, ‘Oh, wow, this song is absolutely fantastic’,” she recalls.
“I couldn’t understand it. You know, it didn’t get any airplay and then, two years later, Tina Turner did it.
“She did put a wonderful middle eight in there that I didn’t have in the original one. They changed the song,” Bonnie adds. “But no, it gave me back my confidence in my choice of material, because I was beginning to doubt myself.”
The Best is one of a handful of songs from ‘Hide Your Heart’ to be covered by other artists; Jimmy Somerville scored a UK Top 10 hit in 1990 with his own cover of the Bee Gees’ To Love Somebody, which Bonnie also featured on the LP, while Cher’s 1991 recording of Save Up all Your Tears climbed into the UK and US Top 40.
Bonnie previously worked with Cher on her 1987 self-titled comeback album, recording backing vocals on the track Perfection.
Recalling the collaboration, which also features Darlene Love, the Lost in France hitmaker remembers: “I sang on Cher’s album, doing some backing vocals.
“I didn’t get to meet her… but she sent me the most enormous arrangement of flowers. Absolutely stunning. It was gorgeous and so, so nice of her.”
Bonnie’s new album, ‘The Best is Yet to Come’, reunites the star with producer David Mackay, who worked her first two records in the late 1970s.
In a review of the LP, Retro Pop called ‘The Best is Yet to Come’ Bonnie’s best album since Hide Your Heart, noting she sounds “rested, strong and raring to go”.
‘The Best is Yet to Come’ is out now.
