Bonnie Tyler It's A Heartache — Bonnie Tyler It's A Heartache

JUL 01 1977 · 12:00

Bonnie Tyler It's A Heartache — Bonnie Tyler It's A Heartache (1977) Director: Mike Mansfield Era: Late 1970s UK Pop (1977) - Post-glam, pre-new wave British pop promotion era; single-spotlight studio performance clips produced for broadcast TV and promotional use High. This video represents one of the earliest confirmed promotional clips for a major international hit of the late 1970s, directed by a key figure in UK pop television history. Its extreme minimalism — single take, isolated spotlight, rain filter — makes it a textbook specimen of the pre-MTV British promotional film format and an essential archival document for the study of music video prehistory. Context: Released in November 1977 on RCA Records, 'It's a Heartache' arrived during a pivotal transitional moment in British pop — the tail end of glam rock and the emergence of punk and disco. The song's production by Ronnie Scott and Steve Wolfe, combined with Tyler's surgically altered, distinctively husky voice, positioned the track as a crossover adult-contemporary hit. The promotional video — a single-spotlight performance clip with minimal production apparatus — reflects the standard UK promotional format of the era, closely aligned with the aesthetic conventions of ITV pop television such as Supersonic and Top of the Pops. The song sold approximately six million copies worldwide and topped charts in multiple countries, establishing Tyler as an international artist. Director notes: According to IMDb, Mansfield directed this 1977 promotional clip, which features Bonnie Tyler performing the song under a spotlight with a rain filter applied at the opening and closing of the video. The single-take, spotlight-focused format is consistent with Mansfield's known production style for British pop promotional films of the mid-to-late 1970s, a period when he was actively producing broadcast-ready performance clips through his company Mike Mansfield Enterprises (MME).