Bonnie Tyler Remembered at Welsh Funeral: "Always a Star but Never a Diva"
Bonnie Tyler was laid to rest on Monday, August 17, at St Mary's Church in Swansea, Wales, in an invite-only celebration-of-life service that was live-streamed on her official channels and projected on a screen outside for fans who gathered in the city.
Her rose-covered coffin was carried into the church to two of her own songs: "If I Sing You A Love Song" and "It's a Heartache." The service came less than a week after her signature hit, "Total Eclipse of the Heart," was used as the soundtrack at celebrations of a total solar eclipse that darkened skies across parts of Europe — a fitting coda for a song that topped charts in both Britain and the United States and has surpassed 1 billion streams.
The day before the funeral, crowds lined the streets of Mumbles, the seaside Welsh village Tyler called home, as a hearse carried her coffin — draped in a Welsh flag — to her house on Mumbles Road. The BBC had reported the plans in advance and invited people to come out and pay their respects.
Tyler died on July 8 at age 75 in a hospital in Faro, Portugal, where she had been hospitalized in May for emergency intestinal surgery. She died unexpectedly as a result of complications from that illness, according to NPR and a statement from her management posted on YouTube.
Her manager, Matthew Davis, delivered a tribute at the funeral. "She was always a star but never a diva," he said, and never forgot her roots.
Those roots were modest. Born Gaynor Hopkins in Skewen, Wales — about seven miles outside Swansea — she was a coal miner's daughter raised in public housing with an outside toilet. She grew up with three sisters and two brothers. According to a eulogy written by her family and read by Canon Justin Davies, Tyler first performed in a contest at a rugby club in the late 1960s. She sang "Those Were The Days," came in second, and won one pound.
That one pound was the start of a career that earned her three Grammy nominations and a berth representing Britain at the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest, where she placed 19th. In 2022, she was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to music. Beyond "Total Eclipse of the Heart," she was widely known for "Holding Out For a Hero," from the soundtrack of the 1984 film Footloose.
For the people of Swansea and Mumbles, the funeral was both a goodbye and a homecoming. The Welsh flag on the coffin, the streets lined with neighbors, the songs played one last time inside a church — all of it returned a worldwide star to the village where she always wanted to be.
