“Total Eclipse of the Heart” was written and produced by Jim Steinman. The “Turn around, bright eyes” refrain first appeared in “Come in the Night”, a song from Steinman’s 1969 musical ‘The Dream Engine’, which he premiered during his final year at Amherst College in Massachusetts.

Jim reused the melodies when he wrote the soundtrack to the 1980 film ‘A Small Circle of Friends’.

In the early 80s, Steinman was best known for his work with Meat Loaf on the album ‘Bat Out of Hell’. By 1981, they had become professionally estranged, and Jim was free to collaborate with other artists. I had just signed with CBS Records and asked if he would be interested in producing my next album. He said no at first, but we sent him some demos of the kind of songs I was looking to record, so he invited me to his apartment overlooking Central Park in New York. I went to meet him there with my manager. When the lift opened on his floor, we saw a trail of eminems leading from the corridor up to his front door.

It was a surreal experience meeting Jim for the first time, but we all got along really well. We discovered that we had very similar music tastes – we were both interested in Phil Spector’s “wall of sound” production technique. He played me “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” by Creedence Clearwater Revival and “Goin' Through the Motions” by Blue Öyster Cult, and Jim asked me if I liked the songs. I said I did – he later told me that if I’d said “no”, he wouldn’t have gone ahead. He wanted to know that we were on the same page.

I came back a few weeks later to hear Jim and Rory Dodd perform “Total Eclipse of the Heart” for me. I was holding onto my copy of the lyrics, reading along with tears in my eyes. I couldn’t believe he was offering it to me.

Jim never gave me a demo – I learned the entire song beside the piano as Jim played.

We recorded nine different takes of the song, and we went back to our apartments to listen to each take. I met up with Jim the next day and we both agreed on our favourite take to work with.

Then we went into studio A at the Power Station in New York to begin recording it properly. Jim picked the backing band, which included members of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. Max Weinberg on drums, Roy Bittan on piano, Steve Buslowe on bass, and myself and Rory Dodd in separate vocal booths. We recorded the track completely live, and then Rick Derringer (guitar) and Larry Fast (synths) added their parts later. Rory Dodd, Eric Troyer and Holly Sherwood created the incredible amounts of layered backing vocals. It’s like an ocean of sound.

We tried re-recording some of the vocal lines, but we found the original guide vocals were so emotionally raw that it was best to keep most of them.

Lots of people seem to think the song is inspired by vampires. Jim Steinman told Playbill that he was writing a musical inspired by the silent film ‘Nosferatu’ around the same time he completed “Total Eclipse of the Heart”. I can see why people might think that – especially with all the references to darkness and the eclipse. But I’ve always interpreted it as an impassioned love song.

I’ve spoken to people who think the song is about mental illness; hearing voices in their head (“turn around”), trying to get their life together but it keeps falling apart.

Jim did get a chance to turn it into a vampire song for his 1997 musical ‘Tanz der Vampire’ – the song was renamed “Totale Finsternis” and sung entirely in German. I performed an English/German version of this with Florian Silbereisen on a German TV show in 2014.