The topic for today’s post may seem a bit odd for a gaming blog, but bear with me. I was getting ready to write my next post for this week’s theme of vampires—all in celebration of the 35th anniversary of Vampire: The Masquerade (VtM)—and then I heard the news this morning.
I heard it on AM radio of all places (yes, at 53, I am officially that old) that Bonnie Tyler passed away at 75.
Just by looking at my friends’ reactions on social media, I can tell that her music resonated deeply with those of us who have been rolling dice for four decades. But what does this have to do with vampires and gaming, you ask? To that, I say: have you actually listened to the lyrics and watched the music video for “Total Eclipse of the Heart”?
Let me show it to you:
With lyrics like these, you can immediately see the vampiric undertones:
“I don’t know what to do and I’m always in the dark.” “Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time.” “Once upon a time there was light in my life / But now there’s only love in the dark.” “Forever’s gonna start tonight.” “Turn around, bright eyes / Every now and then I fall apart.”
I am NOT making this up. Writer Jim Steinman originally conceived the song as a piece for a musical adaptation of the movie Nosferatu (you can read about it in this People article), and the song’s Wikipedia page notes that its original title was “Vampires in Love.”
The connection is not subtle! Even the TV series The Vampire Diaries has an episode named after the song.
This track is a core part of the music I automatically relate to vampires, forever playing on the gaming soundtrack in my head. I KNOW that fans of VtM and the World of Darkness probably have very different, likely more goth-punk, musical references for their games. But between Dracula the Musical, Bonnie Tyler, and other sweeping 80s rock epics, these are my ultimate GM musical references.
Bonnie Tyler had many other hits, of course. The one I immediately think of in a broader gaming context is “Holding Out For A Hero.” It’s been used in superhero movies and countless action sequences, and it is a truly perfect anthem for TTRPG heroics. Here’s the video:
And, keeping with the World of Darkness theme, I must mention that Whitesnake’s “Still of the Night” is obviously an anthem for Werewolf: The Apocalypse:
So, appropriately enough, we started the workweek with a post about musical inspiration for VtM, and ended on the same topic we began with.
See you tomorrow for the final post in our Vampire series. Rest in peace, Bonnie.
