Once upon a time I was falling in love

Really rocking that 80's hair!

But anyway, yes it’s a bit weird. There’s really only been one song that has been on repeat on my ipod over the few days of apocalyptic, snowy weather – Bonnie Tyler’s classic 1983 hit ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’. Okay, so maybe it’s got something to do with my friend’s constant singing of it during a pub lunch after yet another lecture on James Joyce. Apparently it’s some kind of sports anthem now. The real reason, however, is quite simple. I just love the song so much.

I first heard ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ at the age of six. My dad had just got a new company car and it came with a CD player (as opposed to the cassette tapes which I was used to). Bonnie Tyler was track #13 or something on a love songs compilation thing that I found in the glove compartment. Mundanely, I didn’t fall in love immediately. No, I had to wait nearly ten years, when I was undergoing an ironic hipster phase. I say this rather shame-facedly, because of how utterly silly it all was. I wanted to be the cool anti-cool kid, the bloke who proclaimed his cultural superiority over others through copious watching of French films he didn’t understand and through listening to stuff no one else was listening to. Thus, this translated not only into an appreciation for things like Neutral Milk Hotel, but also for a lot of naff, cheesy dance-pop. A lot of the kids at school were into things like Linkin Park because they had loads of guitars and angst, and I consciously listened to things that were the direct opposite. And so it was that I discovered Nicki French’s Euro-dance cover of ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’, playing on the radio one day. It was a perfect symbol of my one-man resistance against conformity. If I could have had an annoying ‘ironic’ haircut I would have got one, except my school didn’t allow it.

Looking back, I’m lucky to have left school with any friends at all.

Of course, later I grew up and discovered that in my little bourgeois bubble I was rebelling against nothing, that I was in fact quite privileged, and making mix CDs featuring Kylie, the Smiths and Argentine rock group Attaque 77 all at once and foisting them onto my unsuspecting friends didn’t make me cooler than the next guy, it just made me look a bit sad. And so I learned to lighten up, stopped being a prat and began enjoying music for reasons other than being part of some kind of imaginary cultural hierarchy.

Nonetheless, despite these epiphanies, ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ remained strong in my heart, perhaps even more so than before. I’d moved past Nicki French by this stage and learned to love the original, with Tyler’s throaty wail and Bruce Springsteen’s bandmates producing the loudest, most bombastic sound possible behind her. I think my favourite bit is right after the first chorus when Max Weinberg’s drums kick in for the instrumental break. I don’t know what the technical drum term is, nor do I care, but it’s a massive sound, like a cannonball. Or indeed, the explosion of the powder keg that had hitherto been giving off sparks.

Either way it’s a song that I have both laughingly sung along to with friends and, rather embarrassingly, one that I’ve played after I’ve had my heart broken. It’s a song with so many associations for me, both joyous and painful, and I can’t think of any other piece of music that is more fitting to soundtrack the beauty, sadness, laughter, and even this incomparably crappy cold caused by the snowfall.

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