Bat Out of Hell - Revisited

[HistoryChief]

Hi everyone, I'm a writer for Spectrum Culture. One of our writers recently wrote a retrospective about the Bat Out of Hell album, which I think users of this forum would enjoy reading and hopefully commenting on.
All comments are indeed welcome.

As this post is entirely Meat Loaf-related and hopefully will prompt discussion on this forum, I hope the admins will allow it.

Thanks for your consideration.

http://spectrumculture.com/2011/01/revisit-meat-loaf-bat-out-of-hell.html

[Julie in the rv mirror]

I think the piece is pretty well written, even if I don't agree with parts of it, particularly where "For Crying Out Loud" is concerned. It's not only my favorite track on the album (along with "Heaven Can Wait, which the writer also dismissed :lol: ), it's probably my favorite Meat Loaf track, period. The arrangement, IMO, is quite beautiful- anything but "saccharine", and Meat's vocals are simply stunning. The writer called the sentiment "nebulous"; I disagree. Clearly, the singer is telling his partner how he was saved by her love:

I was lost till you were found
And I never knew how far down I was falling
Before I reached the bottom

I was damned and you were saved
And I never knew how enslaved
I was kneeling
In the chains of my master

Particularly, in the last section of the song, the singer is listing all the things she has done for him, and for those things, "I thank you", "I need you", "I serve you", etc., all the way down to

When you're crying out loud
You know I love you

To me, this song is the flip side or answer to "Two Out of Three"; as I talked about in this thread:

http://www.mlukfc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16409


While the singer says in "Two Out of Three" (which, I agree is a brilliant song) that "There ain't no way I'm ever gonna love you", in the last song on the record, he indeed loves her after all. She can cry all night, but he loves her for crying. ;)


And as to "Heaven Can Wait", while the sentiment is admittedly less clear, the arrangement is just simple and beautiful. IMO, of course. ;)

"Two Out of Three", while it is hilarious, is also exquisitely sad at the same time, as are many of Jim Steinman's songs. That's part of his genius. :cool: