Eternal Flame (song)

"Eternal Flame" is a song by American pop rock group the Bangles for their third studio album, Everything (1988). Released on January 23, 1989, by CBS, the power ballad was written by group member Susanna Hoffs with the established hit songwriting team of Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly. Davitt Sigerson produced it.

Upon its 1989 single release, "Eternal Flame" became a number-one hit in nine countries, including Australia, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Since its release, it has been covered by many musical artists, including Australian boy band Human Nature, who reached the Australian top 10 with their version, and British girl group Atomic Kitten, who topped four national charts with their rendition.

Production

Two of the song's three writers, Tom Kelly and Susanna Hoffs, had met via the Bangles' October 30, 1986, concert at the Avalon Hollywood (then the Palace). Kelly attended the concert and backstage met the group's members. This led to Hoffs writing songs with Kelly and his regular songwriting partner Billy Steinberg, an experience she found interesting in contrast to her usual songwriting habits. Hoffs would develop lyrics based on a melody she worked out while playing around with a guitar, while Kelly and Steinberg would start with a lyrical idea and write music to fit it. The trio's first composition to be recorded was "I Need a Disguise", which Belinda Carlisle recorded for her 1986 solo debut album. The Bangles' 1988 album Everything would feature two Hoffs/Kelly/Steinberg compositions, both with lead vocals by Hoffs: the upbeat lead single "In Your Room" and "Eternal Flame".

The "Eternal Flame" metaphor was suggested by two eternal flames: one at the gravesite of Elvis Presley at Graceland, where the Bangles had been given a private tour. Hoffs said, "we were taken out to the Garden of Memories, and there was this little box which was supposed to have a lit flame in it, an eternal flame. Actually, that day it was raining so the flame was not on"—and one at a local synagogue in Palm Springs which Steinberg attended as a child. Steinberg explained, "Susanna was talking about the Bangles having visited Graceland, and she said there was some type of shrine to Elvis that included some kind of eternal flame. As soon as those words were mentioned, I immediately thought of the synagogue in the town of Palm Springs, California where I grew up. I remember during our Sunday school class they would walk us through the sanctuary. There was one little red light and they told us it was called the eternal flame." Eternal Flame' was retro in that it has no chorus", Steinberg observed in 2021. The song instead works from an AABA song structure and has a middle eight, the portion beginning "Say my name / Sun shines through the rain", that it repeats twice. "In the 60s, it wasn't that unusual to have songs structured in that way, but, by the 80s, choruses were much more developed and middle eights had started to disappear", Steinberg recalls. the demo was deliberately guitar-oriented, despite sounding more suitable for a keyboard, as the Bangles had no keyboardist. When Hoffs played the demo at a band meeting where members and producer Davitt Sigerson decided what they would record for the upcoming album, it was rejected. Hoffs was "heartbroken" since she had been very enthusiastic about the song, but accepted her bandmates' decision. and that Hoffs had to resist pressure to re-record it with a stronger beat. "I imagined it would feel like skinny dipping—vulnerable yet freeing – and I decided to try it. Nobody could see me; there was a baffle in front of me and it was dark." She liked the experience enough to sing all her vocals on the album that way. "Eternal Flame" elicited different points of comparison from contemporary music critics, among them: "a backhanded tribute to every sappy string-drenched ballad—from Lulu's 'To Sir With Love' to Merrilee Rush's 'Angel of the Morning'—that ever overstayed its welcome on the radio"; "[a] fluffy romantic fantasy [that] resembled the Carpenters a lot more than the Beatles"; "a cloying ballad that Andrew Lloyd Webber could have written for Sarah Brightman"; "[On] 'Eternal Flame' Hoffs does her best inspired reading of Kate Bush". Pan-European magazine Music & Media commented that "this is a very sweet and conventional gospel-tinged ballad with the emphasis on close harmonies."

Vicki Peterson of the Bangles described "Eternal Flame" as "a beautiful song [which] at the time I didn't think essentially Bangles. Anyone could've taken the song and made it a hit". A retrospective AllMusic critique by Matthew Greenwald assessed "Eternal Flame" as "somewhat removed from the Bangles' sound and vibe...[its] gentle, lilting melody...seems ready-made for an artist such as Anita Baker or Whitney Houston. The song features a dramatic bridge that takes the song to a wonderfully emotional place, and adds to the overall dynamics of the piece. In the end, it doesn't fit the Bangles' catalog well, but it remains a minor pop standard." In June 2021, Tom Eames of Smooth Radio ranked "Eternal Flame" as the Bangles' best song. The January 1989 release of "Eternal Flame" as the new Bangles' single was heralded in the Chicago Tribune with the song described as an "old-fashioned killer ballad that is just about as far as one could get from the psychedelic sound of the group's recent Top 5 hit 'In Your Room'."

"Eternal Flame" debuted at number 56 on the Hot 100 issue dated February 4, 1989, when "In Your Room" was ranked at number 45, and rose to number one after eight weeks, making the Bangles the third all-female group to top the Hot 100 multiple times, after the Shirelles and the Supremes. In addition "Eternal Flame" set a record for the song's co-writers: Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly, as the first songwriting team to score a number-one Hot 100 hit five years in a row. "Eternal Flame" also afforded the Bangles a two-week tenure at number one on the Adult Contemporary chart.

International

In the United Kingdom, where "In Your Room" had stalled at number 35, "Eternal Flame" was released on January 23, 1989, and made an eight-week ascent into the top 40 of the UK Singles Chart before reaching number one on April 15, holding the spot for three additional weeks. On June 17, 1989, when the song was at number 38 on the UK chart, it was deleted to clear the way for "Be with You", the third single released from Everything. Overall, "Eternal Flame" spent 20 weeks on the UK chart and was the country's third-best-selling single of 1989.

"Eternal Flame" – 3:46
"What I Meant to Say" – 3:20

UK and Australian 12-inch single

:A1. "Eternal Flame" – 3:55

:B1. "Walk Like an Egyptian" (12-inch dance mix) – 5:48

:B2. "What I Meant to Say" – 3:20

UK cassette single

"Eternal Flame"
"Going Down to Liverpool"
"Hero Takes a Fall"
"James"

European 12-inch maxi-single

:A1. "Eternal Flame" – 3:56

:A2. "What I Meant to Say" – 3:20

:B1. "Walk Like an Egyptian" (extended dance mix) – 5:48

Hong Kong mini-CD single

"Eternal Flame" – 3:55
"Manic Monday" – 3:04
"Hazy Shade of Winter" – 2:48
"Walk Like an Egyptian" – 3:23

Japanese mini-CD single

"Eternal Flame (胸いっぱいの愛)"
"Crash & Burn"

Personnel

Personnel are lifted from the US cassette single sleeve.

| 11

!scope="row"|Canada Top Singles (RPM)

| 2

!scope="row"|Chile (UPI)

| 4

!scope="row"|Denmark (IFPI)

| 7

!scope="row"|El Salvador

| 5

!scope="row"|Europe (Eurochart Hot 100)

| 2

!scope="row"|Finland (Suomen virallinen lista)

| 9

!scope="row"|Luxembourg (Radio Luxembourg)

| 2

!scope="row"|Nicaragua

| 3

!scope="row"|Portugal (AFP)

| 1

!scope="row"|Quebec (ADISQ)

| 5

!scope="row"|Uruguay (UPI)

| 8

!scope="row"|US Cash Box Top 100

| 1

Year-end charts

{|class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"

!Chart (1989)

!Position

!scope="row"|Australia (ARIA)

| 4

!scope="row"|Austria (Ö3 Austria Top 40)

| 10

!scope="row"|Belgium (Ultratop)

| 3

!scope="row"|Canada Top Singles (RPM)

| 26

!scope="row"|Europe (Eurochart Hot 100)

| 4

!scope="row"|Netherlands (Dutch Top 40)

| 1

!scope="row"|Netherlands (Single Top 100)

| 5

!scope="row"|New Zealand (RIANZ)

| 15

!scope="row"|Switzerland (Schweizer Hitparade)

| 5

!scope="row"|UK Singles (OCC)

| 3

!scope="row"|US Billboard Hot 100

| 32

!scope="row"|US Adult Contemporary (Billboard)

| 19