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Welcome back to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate magazine, about the hits from

coast to coast. I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's

Why Is This Song Number One series?

On our last episode, we talked about how Jim Steinman found his muse in the singer Meatloaf,

and together they produced the blockbuster album Bad Out of Hell. But by the 80s, Steinman

and Meatloaf were on the outs, just as Steinman was about to write

some of the biggest songs of his career.

During his first decade, Jim Steinman had worked with a range of people in the theater world,

but in the pop world, his main claim to fame was still Meatlove. It was only in the early 80s, as Jim and Meat became professionally estranged, that Steinman began working with a wider array of pop collaborators.

One of them would be the vehicle for his most enduring song, but she had already had hits of her own years before she met Jim Stein.

Bonnie Tyler, born in London, began recording in London in 1976, and by the end of that year, she had her first British top ten hit.

The Poppy Abba-esque lost in France reached number nine in the UK.

A little over a year later, however, Tyler scored an even

bigger hit around the world.

It's a Harding was not only a blockbuster single, reaching number four in the UK and a remarkable number three in America in the summer of 1978.

It also established a vocal persona for Bonnie Tyler, a rough-hewn, throatier, huskier voice, a kind of gravelly female analog to Rod Stewart.

The challenge, of course, with a fluke smash like It's a Heartache, is following it up.

The song's country music overtones led her management to push Bonnie toward twangier songs

at a time when country pop crossover was doing well on the charts.

However, Tyler's 1979 single, My Guns Are Loaded, only managed to bubble under the Hot 100,

peaking in America at number 107.

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