Crowds turn out for ‘Total Eclipse’ singer Bonnie Tyler’s funeral

It’s A Heartache and another of her hits, If I Sing You A Love Song, were played as pallbearers carried the casket into the minster.

“She is a Welsh icon,” 75-year-old retiree Bette Richards told AFP. “She was a beautiful person. She never changed.”

This video grab taken from an AFPTV video shows mourners and fans gathered outside St. Mary’s Church during a “celebration of life” ceremony for Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler in Swansea, Wales. Photo / Lidia Pedro, AFPTV, AFP

The funeral also featured Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water performed by a male voice choir.

Another Swansea resident, John Edwards, 70, paid tribute to a star who was also very much “an ordinary person” and “one of us”.

He said: “I feel proud … Everybody loves her. It is a big loss.”

Tyler died in hospital in Faro, in southern Portugal, on July 8.

In a eulogy, Tyler’s long-time tour manager Matt Davis remembered a star who could “command any stage” and led a “big and well-lived” life.

Tyler’s death came after she was placed in an induced coma to aid her recovery after emergency surgery in May.

The Grammy-nominated singer, whose real name was Gaynor Hopkins, was born and raised in a traditional coal-mining village northwest of Swansea.

In recent years, she had split her time between Wales and Portugal, where she had a holiday home.

She shot to fame in the 1970s with hits including Lost In France and It’s A Heartache.

Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler, best known for her hit love song Total Eclipse Of The Heart, died in Portugal in July 2026 at the age of 75. Photo / Lidia Pedro, AFPTV, AFP

Total Eclipse Of The Heart later topped the charts in both Britain and the United States.

A male voice choir sang a mournful, slow version of the song as her funeral drew to a close.

Tyler also hit the charts with Holding Out For A Hero in 1984, which featured on the soundtrack to the huge US box office success Footloose.

At the time she was taken ill, she had been about to start a European tour in Malta to mark 50 years since the release of Lost In France, which was her breakthrough hit in 1976.

– AFP