Entertainment: 1)Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce married in star-studded ceremony at Madison Square Garden 2)‘The Pitt’ leads with 25 Emmy nominations and ‘Hacks’ breaks record for comedies with 24; 3)Rogers’ MLSE play the latest shift for Canadian sports landscape, experts say; 4)Happy birthday, 2000 Year Old Man. Mel Brooks is turning 100; 5)Bonnie Tyler, who topped the charts with epic ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart,’ has died at 75
1)Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce married in star-studded ceremony at Madison Square Garden
Courtesy Barrie360.com and The Associated Press
By Kimberlee Kruesi and Jake Offenhartz, July 3, 2026
A “Just Married” sign is displayed on Madison Square Garden during a wedding between singer Taylor Swift and National Football League player Travis Kelce on Friday, July 3, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce married Friday night at Madison Square Garden, where actor Adam Sandler was the surprising officiant at a star-packed ceremony. The secrecy that surrounded the buildup to the nuptials lifted when a marquee outside the Midtown Manhattan arena proclaimed “JUST&T MARRIED” once the deed was done.
The couple did not have bridesmaids or groomsmen, instead opting for Swift’s brother Austin Swift to serve as her man of honor and Kelce’s brother and podcast co-host Jason Kelce serving as his best man, Swift’s publicist Tree Paine said in an email.
The bride and groom’s outfits came from Christian Dior Haute Couture and its designer Jonathan Anderson with shoes custom-made by Christian Louboutin. She wore Cartier jewelry.
The long anticipated union of sports and song brought hype to new heights at a venue made more for historic NBA games and bucket-list concerts. The Kansas City Chiefs’ superstar tight end and the music megastar married as fans and spectators gathered outside in blistering heat, eager to be part of the occasion, even though the event was almost entirely hidden.
Singer Camila Cabello, actors Hugh Grant, Ethan Hawke and Jason Sudeikis, and model Karlie Kloss were among the guests. Running back Kareem Hunt was among Kelce’s Chiefs teammates in attendance. Seattle Seahawks receiver and recent Super Bowl champ Cooper Kupp, New York Giants receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster, NFL announcer Joe Buck and Jenny Han, author of the “The Summer I Turned Pretty” series were also seen entering the arena.
In a culture obsessed with famous couplings it may be the apex celebrity wedding, with perhaps only royal unions getting more attention. Holding such a ceremony in a huge, iconic space that sits at the center of the U.S. media universe while keeping all the details secret made for a surreal scene, but it was a mix of hype and hush that is not out of character for Swift.
An Associated Press camera outside the arena showed a long line of black SUVs dropping off wedding-goers in tuxedos and evening gowns, surrounded by New Yorkers in shorts and Swifties amassing for the occasion.
Celebrities, athletes and friends were posting on social media about getting ready or about to leave for a black-tie event, including Brandon Borders, producer of the New Heights podcast starring Kelce and his brother Jason Kelce; Beau Allen, retired defensive lineman for the Philadelphia Eagles; and Jessica Chastain.
There was a notable lack of social media posts from guests once they had entered the arena, after reports that phones would not be allowed. Rain began falling soon after the marriage was announced.
Weddings have been a constant subject in Swift’s songs since she was a teenager, and her actually walking the aisle for the first time at age 36 adds to the drama. It would also be a first marriage for the 36-year-old three-time Super Bowl champ Kelce, who could have been one of the jock characters in Swift’s early hits.
Sandler, star of “The Wedding Singer” and many other hit comedies, can’t have been high on anyone’s betting list for who would marry the couple, though he’s become an increasingly warm and paternal cultural figure with age. The email announcing the marriage described him as “a friend” of the couple. Kelce was one of the many athletes who appeared in “Happy Gilmore 2,” Sandler’s 2025 sequel to one of his earlier hits.
The relationship of the pop star and the football player has thrilled and fascinated millions around the world — particularly the Swifties, the pop star’s enormous and ardent fan base — ever since the pair first started dating in 2023.
Outside the arena, some frazzled tourists mixed with happy fans.
Lori Powers, who lives an hour north of Manhattan and rode the train in to be near the nuptials, said Swift’s “music is the soundtrack behind so many amazing moments in my life. Relationships, friends, like my husband and my kids.”
She stood outside the arena before the marriage was announced with her friend Cecily Hall.
“Just being here and witnessing all the energy and the excitement, it’s so much fun,” Hall said. “The combination of sports and music makes perfect sense as to why they’re at Madison Square Garden today.”
Questions remain about who may perform and what it looked like inside the affair that could go well into the night.
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s love story, from friendship bracelets to wedding rings
Source Barrie 360The Associated Press
By Jocelyn Noveck, Maria Sherman and Kimberlee Kruesi, July 3, 2026
Taylor Swift gets a kiss from Kansas City Chiefs’ Travis Kelce as they arrive to watch the men’s singles final of the U.S. Open tennis championships in New York on Sept. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File)
What started with a friendship bracelet has resulted in wedding rings. Taylor Swift, the pop superstar, and Travis Kelce, the football champion, have officially tied the knot.
The couple, both 36, were married Friday at Madison Square Garden, according to Swift’s publicist. The news was announced to the public with the marquee outside the Midtown Manhattan arena reading “JUST&T MARRIED.”
It is the latest chapter in the couple’s love story, one that has spanned three years, two Super Bowls, an album announcement and the highest-grossing tour of all time.
Here is a look at some of the major events in their relationship.
A friendship bracelet, undelivered
It started, fittingly, with a friendship bracelet.
It was way back in July 2023 that Kelce attended Swift’s Eras concert at Arrowhead Stadium, where the Chiefs play.
After, on his “New Heights” podcast with brother Jason Kelce, he professed to being disappointed — well, his word was “butthurt” — that he couldn’t meet Swift and present her with a bracelet with his phone number on it.
“She doesn’t meet anybody, or at least she didn’t want to meet me, so I took it personal,” he quipped. The podcast asked on Instagram: “Anyone know how to get a bracelet to @taylorswift13? … asking for a friend.”
Drivin’ the getaway car
But by that September, Kelce was hinting his efforts had achieved some success. He declined to elaborate amid speculation, telling an interviewer: “It is what it is.”
Clearly, though, something was happening. Soon, Kelce revealed he’d invited Swift to a game at Arrowhead. “I threw the ball in her court,” he said on another talk show.
Swift took Kelce up on his offer, appearing for all the world to see at the Chiefs-Bears game, cheering next to his mom, Donna Kelce. The two left the stadium in Kelce’s purple Chevelle “getaway car” — forgive the pun, but Kelce himself used it.
“Pretty ballsy,” Kelce said a few days later of Swift’s appearance, adding how much he loved seeing her cheer next to his mother.
It was the launch of a long series of appearances by Swift at Chiefs games. There was some online angst over whether Swift was distracting from football — while the NFL itself capitalized on her fandom. A day after the flashy Los Angeles premiere of her “Taylor Swift: Eras Tour” movie, she was back at Arrowhead.
Karma is the guy on the Chiefs
And now it was time for Kelce to be the adoring fan. In November 2023, after a hiatus of two months, Swift brought her tour to Argentina, where she changed the lyrics of “Karma” to salute her beau. “Karma is the guy on the Chiefs, coming straight home to me,” she sang. Scott Swift, next to a beaming Kelce, applauded his daughter’s new flame.
When Time magazine announced its person of the year, few were surprised. In the Time interview, Swift spoke about her relationship.
“This all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell,” Swift said, adding that they’d already been a couple before that first Chiefs game cameo.
Soon after, things were heating up on the football field — meaning the Chiefs were heading to the Super Bowl. At the AFC championship game, the couple made it clear they were fine with whatever attention was coming their way. In the middle of the field in Baltimore, after the Chiefs beat the Ravens, Swift and Kelce kissed. “I love you,” Kelce said. “So much it’s not funny.”
A race across nine time zones
There was one game left. Fans wondered: How would Swift make it from her Tokyo shows to the Super Bowl in Las Vegas?
“This week is truly the best kind of chaos,” Swift posted on Instagram.
Chaos indeed. In one week of February 2024, Swift attended the Grammys in Los Angeles, jetted to Tokyo for four concerts, then jumped back onto her private plane to make the Super Bowl with time to spare. To get there, she crossed nine time zones and the international dateline.
“She’s rewriting the history books herself,” Kelce said a day after the Grammys, where Swift had won album of the year for a record fourth time. “I told her I’ll have to hold up my end of the bargain and come home with hardware, too.”
And he did. The two kissed on the field again after the Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers, Swift in her “87” necklace.
On the road again
Within days, Swift was on the road again, with Kelce joining her in Australia for some koala-cuddling at the zoo.
In Paris, Swift introduced a section from “The Tortured Poets Department,” her new album. Fans wondered if Kelce had made his way into some of its lyrics — like “You knew what you wanted and, boy, you got her,” from “So High School.”
But the highlight came in June, during a celebrity-packed set of concerts in London. There, Kelce made his Eras stage debut, donning a tuxedo and top hat and carrying Swift in his arms during a choreographed bit before “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.”
“I’m still cracking up/swooning,” Swift wrote later on Instagram.
‘Happiness and fun and magic’
As for Kelce, he spoke with pride about the relationship, noting on the “Bussin’ with the Boys” podcast that he had no desire to hide anything.
“That’s my girl,” he said. “That’s my lady. I’m proud of that.”
Swift echoed that emotion when she accepted an MTV Video Music Award last September, shouting out “my boyfriend Travis” in her speech.
“Everything this man touches turns to happiness and fun and magic,” she said.
‘I am just a jamoke supporting his girlfriend’
Throughout the summer and fall of 2024, Kelce attended a number of Swift’s remaining tour dates and mentioned her on “New Heights,” officially referring to her as “his girlfriend” in a July episode.
“She is every bit of what everyone makes her out to be. She’s so awesome. Some of these people you meet, and you’re just like, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here,’” he said. “You are unbelievable, your talent is unbelievable, how you present yourself is unbelievable and I am just a jamoke supporting his girlfriend.”
Swift, too, was regularly photographed attending Kelce’s games — including the 2025 Super Bowl.
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Lights, camera, action, football
A month post-Super Bowl, the couple made their red-carpet debut at the Tight End University in June, an annual three-day training summit founded by Kelce, George Kittle and Greg Olsen.
They were then spotted at Brooklyn Bowl in Nashville, where Swift hopped on stage to perform “Shake it Off” with country singer Kane Brown. For fans, it marked yet another moment of the couple showing very public support and admiration for one another.
’The Life of a Showgirl’
A couple that collaborates together, stays together.
Swift announced her highly anticipated 12th studio album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” in mid-August and included Kelce in the rollout. It began with a tease from “New Heights,” which later revealed Swift would appear in an episode the following day.
Swift told the Kelce brothers she wanted to show them something, revealing a mint-green briefcase that featured her initials in orange. Jason Kelce asked what was in it, prompting her to pull out a vinyl record.
’Our jobs are very similar’
In the two-hour “New Heights” episode featuring Swift, she went into detail about the pair’s summer following the Super Bowl. She said she spent considerable time in Florida with Travis Kelce. She also said “our jobs are very similar”: They revolve around entertaining “people for three hours in NFL stadiums.”
On her self-described “favorite podcast,” Swift credited “New Heights” for getting her a boyfriend. “This is sort of what I’ve been writing songs about wanting to happen to me since I was a teenager,” she said of their romance.
And Kelce credited the tour for, well, getting him a girlfriend. “I see you on that stage and see how you can get an entire stadium going, and then I get you in a room and it’s like I’ve known you forever,” he said. “It’s the easiest conversation I ever had, and it was just so much fun that it knocked my socks off.”
Jock, meet writer
In late August, in a five-photo carousel shared to both Swift and Kelce’s official Instagram accounts, the couple announced their engagement. “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married,” she wrote in her caption.
It’s unclear when and where the two got engaged.
A wedding at MSG
The idea seemed too crazy for even the most open-minded Swifty — a wedding at Madison Square Garden? Really? Yet as the July Fourth weekend approached, one of New York’s iconic venues began buzzing with activity as crews shuttled equipment into the giant, private space and a law enforcement official confirmed to AP that Swift and Kelce’s wedding would be taking place on Friday, July 3.
The couple did not have bridesmaids or groomsmen, instead opting for Swift’s brother to serve as her man of honor and Kelce’s brother Jason serving as his best man. Actor Adam Sandler officiated the star-packed ceremony.
According to Swift’s publicist, Swift and Kelce’s outfits were designed by Christian Dior Haute Couture and its designer Jonathan Anderson with shoes custom-made by Christian Louboutin. Swift wore Cartier jewelry.
Courtesy Barrie360.com and The Associated Press
By ANDREW DALTON, July 9, 2026
LOS ANGELES (AP) — “The Pitt” led all nominees with 25 in a dominant sophomore season, while “Hacks” got a graduation party with a record-setting 24 to lead all comedies in its final season as Emmy nominations were announced Wednesday.
The totals give HBO Max the top spot for both drama and comedy, with “Hacks” breaking the record for most nominations for a comedy series held jointly by “The Studio” last year and “The Bear” in 2024. HBO Max led all outlets with 122 overall nominations and has three shows up for both best drama and best comedy series.
The nominees announced for 118 Primetime Emmy categories included the late Rob Reiner for his guest acting on “The Bear,” Bad Bunny for his Super Bowl halftime show, and newlywed Taylor Swift for “The Eras Tour – The Final Show” concert special.
‘Hacks’ gets a special send-off and ‘The Pitt’ grows up
Emmy voters love a departing show, and have loved the tension-between-comedy-generations “Hacks” since its first season, allowing it to run up the numbers as a fifth-year senior. Star Jean Smart has won best actress in a comedy for all four previous seasons, and it would be stunning if she didn’t claim a fifth.
Her sidekick throughout the series Hannah Einbinder, who last year broke through and won supporting actress in a comedy in her fourth nomination, got a fifth. Her castmate, the show’s co-creator Paul W. Downs, got three nominations, for acting, writing and producing.
The day-in-the-life emergency room series “The Pitt” was a rookie upstart last year with big wins including best drama series, best actor for Noah Wyle and best supporting actress for Katherine LaNasa.
This image released by HBO shows Jean Smart in a scene from “Hacks.” (HBO via AP)
Already a beloved veteran show, it owned this year’s acting categories. Wyle was nominated again for best actor (along with nods for his directing and producing) as was LaNasa. Taylor Dearden, Fiona Dourif and Sepideh Moafi also got nominations, with “The Pitt” taking four of the seven supporting actress spots and three supporting actor slots.
In an era when major Emmy contenders — like 2025’s top drama nominee “Severance” — take years off between seasons, “The Pitt” came right back for another round. And its claim on the acting categories was helped by the between-seasons absence of “The White Lotus,” and its elite ensembles.
2)Rogers’ MLSE play the latest shift for Canadian sports landscape, experts say
Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press
By Sammy Hudes, July 7, 2026
Sports business experts say Rogers Communications Inc.’s full takeover of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment is the latest sign of a shift in Canada’s professional sports landscape.
The telecommunications giant announced Monday it will acquire the remaining 25 per cent stake in MLSE it didn’t yet own for $4.35 billion, spelling the end for longtime part-owner Larry Tanenbaum through his holding company, Kilmer Sports Inc.
MLSE owns the NHL’s Maple Leafs, NBA’s Raptors, MLS’ Toronto FC and the CFL’s Argonauts. Last year, Rogers closed a separate $4.7-billion deal with rival BCE Inc. to buy its 37.5 per cent stake in MLSE, making it the majority owner.
Rogers and Bell previously owned equal stakes in the sports conglomerate, while the remaining quarter was owned by Kilmer. Rogers held an option allowing it to buy out that remaining 25 per cent stake this year.
The move comes amid other big changes involving Rogers’ sports ventures.
In a joint announcement with CBC last month, the pair said they wouldn’t renew their sublicense agreement that allowed the public broadcaster to air NHL games on Hockey Night in Canada. That means Rogers-owned properties will be the only option for nationally televised games in English on Saturday nights.
“The days of free-to-air are gone,” said Concordia University sports economist Moshe Lander.
“It’s not just the Canadian sports landscape that’s changing. This is something that other leagues have realized before the NHL, which is you only have so much money that you can make from game day sales.”
He said hockey has long been overly reliant on a revenue strategy of “how many bums in seats can you fill,” but has recently taken steps to diversify, including through lucrative television deals. That forces fans to pay more to watch hockey, along with their other favourite sports.
Last year, Rogers and the NHL extended their national TV rights deal for English broadcasts. The 12-year, $11-billion agreement starts in the upcoming 2026-27 season.
In addition to MLSE, Rogers owns the Toronto Blue Jays, Rogers Centre and Sportsnet network.
“They’re now realizing that, ‘Wait there’s a lot more other opportunities here to make money,’ TV being just one of them,” Lander said.
“If you have teams that are being owned by multimedia platforms, there is that ability then to innovate and to create lots of different revenue streams that go just beyond, ‘Hey how many people showed up to tonight’s Leafs game?'”
Rogers also has TV partnerships with the Vancouver Canucks, Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers, along with the NBA.
Lander said sports are among the few remaining entertainment options where live programming is still valued. With MLSE, the Blue Jays and a national sports broadcaster all under one figurative roof, he said Rogers has a stranglehold on some of the biggest content makers.
“When you have Rogers owning (MLSE), they basically create content for themselves and for their platforms,” he said.
“It makes sense, I guess, in Canada to have all of that stuff concentrated in one company. If you have it spread out, if you have different owners, if it’s not fully concentrated, then there’s not necessarily the same unity of purpose.”
Some Toronto-area pro sports teams still exist outside the Rogers bubble though.
Kilmer owns the Toronto Tempo, who are playing their inaugural WNBA season. Last month, it became the first Canadian investor in the PWHL, which is owned by the Mark Walter Group.
Women’s soccer team AFC Toronto, of the Northern Super League, is majority-owned by Canadian-American investor Mark Mitchell. Inter Toronto FC, a men’s soccer team playing in the Canadian Premier League, was bought by Mexican brothers Ricardo, Eduardo and Miguel Pasquel, via Game Plan Sports Group, in 2023.
Yet there are relatively few competitors in the sports ownership space in Canada, which has led to an “oligopoly setup,” said Brock University’s Michael Naraine.
He said Rogers has “made a purposeful, intentional play to continue to double down on being the sports leader in this country.”
“Rogers has been using sport to try to position themselves as Canadiana in the same way that Tim Hortons does this with Timbits hockey and Timbits soccer,” said Naraine, a professor of sport management.
“To do that, they’re going to spend the billions of dollars to get hockey rights. They’re going to spend the billions of dollars to get the best teams in this country.”
The strategy is also playing out at a time of elevated Canadian pride, he noted, in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war and rhetoric referring to Canada as “the 51st state.”
Rogers was also the jersey sponsor of Team Canada during last year’s 4 Nations Face-Off hockey tournament, which happened to coincide with the height of Canada-U.S. tensions after Trump returned to office.
“Rogers has figured out that these are products that people want. This is content that people across the country, coast-to-coast want to see,” Naraine said.
“These are things that are associated with Canadiana and as we go through this period of nation-building and patriotism … sport is going to be even more relevant. Canadians are going to want to tune in and over time they’ll know that association, that Rogers is sport.”
3)Happy birthday, 2000 Year Old Man. Mel Brooks is turning 100
Courtesy Barrie360.com and The Associated Press
By Canadian Press, June 26, 2026
NEW YORK (AP) — The 2000 Year Old Man is turning 100. Mel Brooks on Sunday will celebrate his centennial birthday.
The comedian and filmmaker has been awaiting the milestone. Earlier this year, Judd Apatow titled his retrospective documentary on him: “Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!”
“I was born to make people laugh,” Brooks says in the film. “So, I do that.”
Brooks was born Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn, New York, on June 28, 1926. After serving in the Army during World War II and performing in the Borscht Belt, Sid Caesar hired him as a writer. On his “Show of Shows,” Brooks met Carl Reiner, who’d remain a lifelong friend and with whom he created the “2000 Year Old Man” sketches.
Reiner would pepper Brooks’ ancient man with questions about what Jesus was like. “Jesus … yes, yes,” Brooks would answer. “Thin lad. Wore sandals. Always walked around with 12 other guys.”
Brooks went to make classic comedies like “The Producers,” “Blazing Saddles,” “Young Frankenstein” and “High Anxiety.” It all started, Brooks told The Associated Press in 2021, with his childhood in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
“I wanted to keep the party going. I wanted to keep the happiness and joy and explosions of laughter going into a dour part of our lives, not our childhood anymore,” Brooks recalled. “I was once interviewed and the guy said, ‘What was the happiest part of your life? Was it winning the Academy Award? Was it marrying Anne Bancroft?’ I said no, not at all. It was my childhood. From about 4 or 5 to 9, it was the most exciting, happiest, joyous life that anyone could experience.
“The guy said, ‘What happened at 9?’ I said, ‘Homework.’”
In April, Brooks submitted a video message to Eddie Murphy to honor him for his AFI life achievement award. In May, he announced that he was donating thousands of his documents and photographs to the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, New York.
“I’ve always been proud to say that I make people laugh for a living,” Brooks said then in a statement. “So, knowing that my work will have a home at comedy’s national archive and continue making people laugh leaves me with a deep sense of pride.”
Brooks has sometimes made mortality a joke, too. In a 1980s sketch, he created a coin-operated gravestone for himself that played a videotaped message. It began: “I was Mel Brooks, one of the funniest little Jews to walk the Earth.”
When asked in that AP 2021 interview if he thought much about death, Brooks said no.
“I gave up after 60 thinking about it because if I did, I’d be thinking about it all the time. So I don’t think about it much. When and if it happens it’s going to be a sad day — for everybody but me,” Brooks said, laughing.
“I enjoy living,” he added. “I’d like to do it as long as I can.”
4)Bonnie Tyler, who topped the charts with epic ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart,’ has died at 75
Courtesy Barrie360.com and The Associated Press
By MARK KENNEDY, July 9, 2026
Bonnie Tyler, the gravelly voiced, Grammy-nominated Welsh pop star best known for singing the chart-topping power ballad “Total Eclipse of the Heart” in 1983, and seeing new generations succumb to its bombastic charms during solar and lunar eclipses, has died. She was 75.
Tyler died unexpectedly in a hospital in Portugal where she was being treated for an illness, her family said Thursday in a statement on her website. She was hospitalized in May in Faro, where she had a home, for emergency intestinal surgery. She had been placed in an induced coma for a period but was reportedly improving last month and expected to make a good recovery.
“Bonnie’s family and team are heartbroken to announce that Bonnie unexpectedly passed away last night in hospital in Portugal as a result of the illness that she was being treated for,” her family said.
Tyler earned three Grammy nods, represented Britain at the Eurovision Song Contest 2013, where she came in 19th. She was honored as a Member of the Order of the British Empire for her services to music by Queen Elizabeth II in 2022, all largely thanks to “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” which has had more that 1 billion streams, boosted by real eclipses in 2017 and 2024.
The song spent four weeks at No. 1, and when Stereogum reevaluated it in 2020, the music outlet declared it an “extinction-level event rendered in musical form.”
“It’s pop music as heart-pounding, chest-thumping, blood-gargling, heavens-falling passion explosion. It’s sheer spectacle. It’s fireworks and lasers and lightning and thunder. It soars and swoops and barrel-rolls,” the site said.
The song has never really gone away, covered by the English singer Nicki French in 1995, and the band Westlife in 2006. Cate Blanchett sang it while hitting Billy Bob Thornton with her car in 2001’s “Bandits,” it appeared in a wedding scene in 2003’s “Old School” and One Direction sang it in 2010 on a U.K. version of “The X Factor.”
Early life
Tyler was born — as Gaynor Hopkins — a coal miner’s daughter in public housing with an outside toilet in Skewen, Wales, about 7 miles (11 kilometers) outside Swansea. She grew up with three sisters and two brothers.
She adored the Beatles and her first album was “A Hard Day’s Night.” The first song she bought was “Hippy Hippy Shake” by the Swinging Blue Jeans at 13 and watched “Top of the Pops” religiously, according to her memoir, “Straight From the Heart.”
She would record “Top of the Pops” on a reel-to-reel two-track recorder and write down the lyrics of songs she loved. Her favorites were songs by Janis Joplin, Nina Simone, Tina Turner, Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding.
“I used to sing them into my hairbrush for hours and hours, and that’s how it all started for me. I fell in love with singing just from doing that. Looking back, even then my voice had a husky tone to it, but I didn’t think much of it. I thought everyone’s voices were different from each other’s,” she wrote.
In 1976 she had to have surgery to remove nodules on her throat, leaving her with that trademark vocal sound. Changing her name to Sherene Davis, she was fronting a soul band when she was discovered by talent scout Roger Bell, who brought her to London for demo sessions. Then she waited for a label until RCA said it was interested.
Under her new RCA-sanctioned name Bonnie Tyler, her debut album “The World Starts Tonight” in 1977 contained her first chart hit, “Lost in France,” and she was nominated for a breakthrough artists award at the Brits Awards. She then had a No. 3 hit in 1978 with “It’s a Heartache,” but soon drifted. She then signed with Sony and saw Meat Loaf perform “Bat Out of Hell” on the BBC. Impressed, she requested to work with Meat Loaf songwriter and producer Jim Steinman.
‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’
Steinman introduced her to his song “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” which would become the debut single for her fifth studio album, “Faster Than the Speed of Night.” He borrowed one of the song’s lyrics — “Turn around, bright eyes” — from his 1969 musical “The Dream Engine,” written as a student at Massachusetts’ Amherst College. He told her the song was from a prospective musical version of “Nosferatu.”
“Jim liked to put down a basic rhythm track, do nine takes of the song, choose the best one and then put the kitchen sink on there, like Phil Spector used to,” Tyler told The Guardian in 2023. “He gave me a cassette to listen to in my hotel and we both preferred take two.”
Featuring E Street Band members Roy Bittan on piano and Max Weinberg on drums, “Total Eclipse” is a rumination on lost love: “Once upon a time there was light in my life/But now there’s only love in the dark,” she sings.
The video, a staple of early-days MTV, was shot in a frightening gothic former asylum in Surrey, where the guard dogs apparently wouldn’t set foot in the rooms downstairs where they used to give people electric shock treatment. The visuals included slow-motion tossed doves, candles, dancing ninjas, dancing greasers, Tyler in frighteningly big shoulder pads, fencers, gymnasts, wind machines and shirtless boys wearing swim goggles being doused with water.
“Faster Than the Speed of Night” earned a Grammy nomination for best rock vocal performance — losing to Pat Benatar’s “Love Is a Battlefield” — and Tyler got another nod for “Total Eclipse of the Heart” in the best pop vocal performance category, losing to Irene Cara’s “Flashdance — What a Feeling.”
After the ‘Eclipse’
Tyler never reached such dizzying heights again but stayed current with such movie soundtrack singles as “Holding Out For a Hero” — from 1984’s “Footloose” — and “Here She Comes” from “Metropolis” also in 1984.
Her 2019 disc “Between the Earth and the Stars” featured duets with Rod Stewart, Cliff Richard and Status Quo’s Francis Rossi, and she ended that year performing a Vatican Christmas concert before Pope Francis.
In 2013, she switched gears to make a country-flavored record in Nashville, “Rocks and Honey,” which included the Vince Gill duet “What You Need From Me” and a little ballad called “Believe in Me,” written by American songwriter Desmond Child and British songwriters Lauren Christy and Christopher Braide. “Believe in Me” was picked to represent the United Kingdom at that year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Sweden.
“It was an absolutely wonderful atmosphere there,” she told the San Francisco Examiner in 2023. “I was being interviewed every 15, 20 minutes, and when I walked out onstage behind the British flag, I thought the roof was going to come off! It was awesome, just awesome!”
In 2017, she joined Joe Jonas’ band DNCE for a performance on the cruise ship Oasis of the Seas as part of a “Total Eclipse Cruise.” When the moon passed in front of the sun, they played “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”
Tyler was married to property developer and former Olympic judo competitor Robert Sullivan.