Bonnie Tyler: Total Eclipse of the Heart Meaning
Covered By: Glee Cast, Chloe Kohanski (2017)
Total Eclipse of the Heart Lyrics
little bit lonely and you're never coming around
Turnaround, Every now and then I get a
little bit tired of listening to the sound of my tears
Turnaround, Every now and then I get a
little bit nervous...
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I read a response on there which said that the music video and lyrics are unrelated. I disagree. The music video, in my view, always provides clues to the meaning of a song.
Clearly, this is a song about a teacher, principal, or other school official who is in love with a student, but can never act on this love because it's inappropriate for someone in her position. So this "boy" is a fantasy she's manufactured in her mind, and her desire is to have a relationship with him, but due to the inappropriateness of such a relationship, her love can only be in the dark, that is, in her dreams. So the thought of this boy haunts her, and it's a shadow over her heart. -
The song is a vampire love song. The original title for this was vampires in love.
Steinman said in an interview with Playbill:
with Total Eclipse of the Heart, I was trying to come up with a love song and I remembered I actually wrote that to be a vampire love song. Its original title was Vampires in Love because I was working on a musical of Nosferatu, the other great vampire story. If anyone listens to the lyrics, they're really like vampire lines. It's all about the darkness, the power of darkness and love's place in dark.. -
The lyrics are meant to be taken literally and the song is about vampires in love. Not joking. "Once upon a time there was light in my life, now there's only love in the dark."
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I don't know what it means but I know that I literally cry every time I hear this song. I want to know what that means.
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This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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I think that this song had no meaning whatsoever. This was the 80's. They were seriously coked up. Watch the video. There is absolutely no correlation to anything on the song that is happening in the video.
this was just some song created to make money because the tune is catchy. If you really think there is a deeper meaning then you are on drugs as well. -
They are married and part of her deeply loves him but the other part of her wants to leave the married. She feels lonely and in the dark because he cannot meet her needs. He is not there for her most of the time but he still gives her hope of happiness during the few moments they have together which he shows that he still have feelings for her. She knows she needs more than that and she knows he does not love her as much as she loves him. She knows she is not happy in the relationship but that few moments that she still gets to be with him make her stay. She is lonely and she is afraid at the same time and does not know what to do because her life revolves around him and trying to make him love her. She was happy once in the past with him before she realizes he did not care about her like he should and that's why she talks about the eclipse of the heart, because now she is living in the dark.
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To me the song is about a very strong love between a man and a woman and he doesn't understand her battle with depression. He gives her the will to live, but he is emotional distant because he fears her depression. This causes a rift in the relationship. He is unable to get her through her dark times. This scares her and she knows she needs to leave him if she's going to survive. She hopes he will be there when she hits bottom, but knows he won't. Maybe the "Turn around Bright Eyes" is him remembering her before the depression took over her life.
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I took a much darker meaning. The boy she loved as a girl died, and she is still carrying on some kind of weird love affair with his memory. She doesn't hear him saying turn around because he is a ghost. This freaks me out because I woke up from a dream where I was hearing this song. I had to look it up because I hadn't heard it in ages.
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I believe it is about a marriage and the woman is still very much in love, but the man is not; she is lonely because he's never around. She is very sad, and tired of being sad. Now she is passed her prime and feels she has wasted her youth on him and realizing he only was with her for sex. He was a hot shot in whatever he was good at when he was young, and he gave it all up for her. "Every now and then she gets a little terrified" because she made a mistake marrying someone wo doesn't love her. The only time she has any hope at all that he loves her anymore is when "she sees the look in his eyes", which means he wants to be with her and they make love, which gives her hope that part of him still loves her. But "every now and then [she] falls apart, and understands the reality of the situation and just wants to run away a
nd start over. Of course being a woman, she is highly emotional, just wants him to hold her in his arms as she cries. Gets furious with him because he doesn't love her the way she loves him. They fight all the time because of this, "living in a powder keg and giving off sparks." The make up sex is so great, it gives her hope, and in the musky darkness she can fiol herself into believing everything will be okay. Then he leaves and the reality sets in that there is only "love in the dark." -
It's interesting to see the different interpretations.
I believe it's about true love, magical, the perfect match made from heaven. Yet there are insecurities, distance, carnal thinking, which is stopping the man from taking the next step. He does love her, but he lets the distance, money matters, doubt, stop him from going further. It's tearing her apart, because he can't make the next step.
They will always love each other. -
In my opinion, at the beginning of their relationship, the love was mutual but after a while, the guy slowly began drifting away, distancing himself from the woman, but she was still in love with him so even though he seemed like he didn't want her, he kept on keeping her hopes up with the way he looked at her. Therefore, she still had hope. She felt the desperate need to feel loved by him and so she felt lonely and in the dark. That is my interpretation of the song.
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actually this song Comes from a book called "Wuthering Heights". For those familiar with the book, its about Heathcliff and Catherine's love. "Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time" is about how even after Catherine is dead, Heathcliff still always feels her and is "Haunted" by her spirit. "We're living in a powder keg and giving off sparks"-that's like how even though they are both very open with their love, due to external situations, it isn't allowed to grow
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Its more likely wanting something that impossible in relationship aka unrequited love. But they both love each other unconditionally. So, they let it go with the flow.
E. -
My take is that it's about an extra-marital affair. He never comes around....because he's married, she gets nervous, then he gives her "the look" and she's okay again for a while. But...she has many lonely nights where all she can do is cry. I could go on and on, but it all points to "affair" for me.
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