Bonnie Tyler’s distinctive singing voice – husky, rasping and dissolute – made her sound like a female Rod Stewart, a likeness she always said she was ‘flattered’ by.

She forged a similar rock star persona, too, abandoning her early country-pop image, in a hugely successful collaboration with the record producer who also made Meat Loaf a global superstar.

That partnership with Jim Steinman, known as the Lord of Excess, was an unlikely one: Bonnie, who never embraced the lifestyle to go with that persona, always toured with her adored husband Robert Sullivan by her side.

But their professional partnership made the shy girl from a tiny Welsh village near Swansea into an international sensation.

Her greatest hit, Total Eclipse Of The Heart, released in 1983 when she was 32, was written by Steinman, who also directed the iconic video that accompanied the single.

Extravagant, baroque and unfathomable, it featured Bonnie in a dream sequence with American footballers, doves and pagan dancers.

Bonnie Tyler forged a rock star persona in a hugely successful collaboration with the record producer who also made Meat Loaf a global superstar

The singer, who has died aged 75, always toured with her adored husband Robert Sullivan by her side

She was also persuaded by Steinman to abandon her usual leather jacket and jeans and wore a diaphanous white dress with a daring split for the recording at Holloway Sanatorium, a former psychiatric hospital in Virginia Water, Surrey.

Bonnie recognised it as timeless and enduring and so it proved to be: when released, it was selling at a rate of 57,000 copies a day, and went to number one in both the UK and the US, spending a month at the top of the American charts.

It earned Bonnie two Grammy nominations and to date has sold more than six million copies. The album Faster Than The Speed of Night, on which it featured, also proved record-breaking: the singer made it into the Guinness World Records as the first woman to debut at number one in the UK Albums Chart.

In the summer of 2017, the song had a new lease of life when it became the most downloaded single during the solar eclipse that year, passing a billion for Spotify streams worldwide.

‘Total Eclipse Of The Heart grabbed people’s attention. It was the song I’d been waiting for all my life and it has taken me to a new level of success that I didn’t ever expect to achieve,’ Bonnie said.

Steinman also wrote her other major 1980s hit: Holding Out For A Hero.

Bonnie, who has died aged 75, following an emergency intestinal surgery in May at a hospital near Faro, Portugal (where she had a second home on the Algarve) met her husband, her own hero, when she was just 18.

He was then under-manager of the club in Swansea where she first performed professionally with a backing group called The Dixies.

He was also a British Judo champion, more famous than she was then, who competed in the 1972 Munich Olympics. When they were married in Skewen, the village where she was raised, in 1973 – she was 22 and he was two years older – she said it was the ‘happiest day’ of her life.

Despite a career that brought her into the orbit of a galaxy of mega stars, including her idol Paul McCartney, she always maintained that this was the case. Indeed, when she started touring she and Robert made a pact, never broken, that he would always travel with her.

Bonnie Tyler and Robert Sullivan met when she was just 18. Pictured at their wedding in 1973, which she says was the ‘happiest day’ of her life

Bonnie was born Gaynor Hopkins in June 1951, and brought up, one of six children, in a four-bedroom council house with an outside lavatory

Her pleasures were modest ones. She insisted she preferred a meal and conversation with friends after a performance, and said she could think of nothing worse than wild Hollywood parties. She never took drugs, preferring an energy drink and a single shot of Jack Daniel’s whisky before a concert.

When asked what was the most outrageous thing she’d ever done, she cited the time a rock critic yanked her distinctive, flowing blonde hair, convinced it was a wig, and tried to pull it off.

She was so angry she grabbed his testicles and asked: ‘Are yours real?’

She remained modest and undemanding, maintaining it takes the same amount of effort to be pleasant as rude, and despite her success, on short-haul flights was happy to travel economy.

Her cousin Dorothy made many of her stage clothes and she never employed a stylist, or permitted anyone to choose her outfits – a rare exception being that Steinman video.

Her affection for Wales, where she and Robert had a large Victorian home on the Gower Coast at Mumbles, was deep-rooted.

She was born Gaynor Hopkins in June 1951, and brought up, one of six children, in a four-bedroom council house with an outside lavatory.

What the family lacked materially, they made up for in love: she adored her parents – father Glyn, a Dunkirk veteran, miner then baker, and her Mum Elsie, who had a wonderful singing voice – and was close to all her siblings. As children, she and two of her sisters once shared a double bed.

The family were devout churchgoers and her first performance was singing All Things Bright and Beautiful at a Sunday service.

Bonnie’s affection for Wales, where she and Robert had a large Victorian home on the Gower Coast at Mumbles, was deep-rooted. Pictured at her home in 2003

The singer never took drugs, preferring an energy drink and a single shot of Jack Daniels whisky before a concert

Bonnie left school at 16 and started working in a grocery shop, and in April 1969, encouraged by her aunt, she entered a talent contest at the local rugby club, coming second to an accordionist, and winning £1, ‘which was still quite a lot of money back then’, she observed.

Never lacking self-belief, she got a job at a Swansea club performing as a backing singer for Bobby Wayne and the Dixies, before forming her own band, Imagination.

A talent scout spotted her and she secured an agent, who had to contact her by ringing a public phone box – a nearby neighbour took the call and summoned her – to tell her she’d got a deal with RCA records.

Her single More Than A Lover, released in January 1977, was, absurdly, banned by ITV for being too raunchy.

But Lost In France, from her 1977 album The World Starts Tonight, became her first major hit single. It was elaborately promoted, with 50 journalists flying to interview her at a chateau near Toulouse.

The Radio 1 DJ Simon Bates, a huge supporter, promised on air that he’d ‘scrub the steps of the BBC with his toothbrush’ if it didn’t make the Top Ten. Thankfully it did and his toothbrush was spared.

But while her professional life was in the ascendancy, the singing was taking its toll.

The cause of a persistent sore throat was diagnosed as nodules on her vocal cords. She had suffered with them before, while singing in clubs, but rest had then brought respite. This time they persisted and had to be removed in an operation.

While her professional life was in the ascendancy, the singing was taking its toll. The cause of a constant sore throat was diagnosed as nodules on her vocal cords. Pictured on stage in 1984

Her surgeon told her not to talk, let alone sing, for six weeks.

The wait was agonising, and when she returned to the studio in November 1977 to record a new song, It’s A Heartache that Steve Wolfe and Ronnie Scott had written for her they remarked that her voice had changed.

‘It’s gone all husky. But it’s good; we like it! You sound like a female Rod Stewart,’ they said.

Bonnie’s voice was naturally gravelly – the throatiness had just been exaggerated by the operation – and she took the comment as a huge compliment. ‘I’d always thought Rod was amazing,’ she said. ‘I was flattered.’

The single was another hit, too: It’s A Heartache reached number four in the UK Singles Chart and number three in the US Billboard Hot 100.

But when her contract with RCA ended, fearing her sound was ‘a bit washed out and safe’ she signed with CBS and said she’d love to work with ‘whoever writes and produces Meat Loaf.’

The result was that seminal album Faster Than The Speed of Light, which had platinum sales in the UK, America, South Africa, Sweden, Australia, Switzerland and New Zealand – to name a few – and changed her life.

She said that whenever she met Meat Loaf after Steinman wrote Total Eclipse for her, he would joke: ‘That song was mine!’ She added that she had no idea why Steinman chose her to record it, but would be forever grateful because its appeal is ‘universal’.

Bonnie and Robert did not have children, but she remained a devoted aunt to her ever-growing brood of nieces and nephews, their children, and also her six godchildren. Pictured in 1977

The star was honoured with an MBE in 2023. She was also was awarded two honorary degrees: one from Cardiff University and one from Swansea

Her subsequent albums Rocks And Honey and Between The Earth And The Stars, enjoyed critical acclaim but never matched the enormous success of those Eighties rock star anthems.

She did not become embittered by this, only relishing the huge success she had enjoyed. She sang Total Eclipse Of The Heart and It’s A Heartache as a guest at the wedding in 2000 of fellow Swansea girl and friend Catherine Zeta Jones to Michael Douglas, enjoying every moment.

She and Robert did not have children. Her career having consumed her for so long, she fell pregnant at 39 and miscarried, but she remained a loving and devoted aunt to her ever-growing brood of nieces and nephews, and their children, as well as to her six godchildren.

During the Covid lockdown she was rushed to hospital in Faro, Portugal with agonising stomach pain which doctors thought might be a blocked bowel.

Although she had exploratory surgery medics never did ascertain exactly what had caused her symptoms.

She was always self-assured but also modest, and recognised the irony in the fact that she left school at 16, but was awarded two honorary degrees: one from Cardiff University and one from Swansea.

She was honoured with an MBE in 2023.

And in the extravagant, ephemeral world of showbiz, Bonnie Tyler remained resolutely Welsh – even early elocution lessons did not extinguish her sing-song accent – unequivocally in love with her husband, and absolutely unspoiled by success.