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December 11, 2004
One of my more interesting recent obsessions has been with the music of Jim Steinman. For those of you needing a refresher, Steinman's career took off when he wrote all the songs for Meat Loaf's 1977 Bat out of Hell album, which featured the title track and "Paradise by the Dashboard Light," among others. Then, in 1983 Steinman wrote the best power ballad of them all, Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart." Since then he has been a power-balled hired gun, writing numerous tracks including Air Supply's "Making Love out of Nothing at All," Celine Dion's "It's All Coming Back to Me Now," Meat Loaf's "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)," Bonnie Tyler's gay anthem "Holding out for a Hero," and many others.
What I've become interested in are Jim Steinman's also-ran songs, the would-be hits that didn't quite take off. Chief among them are the 11 songs on Steinman's own solo opus, Bad for Good, which was released in 1981. It was supposed to be the successor to Bat out of Hell, except that Meat Loaf went on a lengthy drug-induced hiatus and supposedly damaged his voice. So Steinman took over, making an album that is in many ways the ultimate Steinman musical work, and in other ways a complete failure. I highly recommend the track "Surf's Up," which is sort of a bizarre power ballad/Beach Boys tribute. The production of it anticipates "Total Eclipse," which would follow two years later. Steinman's music is, of course, characterized by overblown production of impossibly cheesy lyrics and song titles. In fact, no one else has been really able to come close to some of his more memorable moments. Most of his work seems to be informed by gay sensibilities; if a heterosexual sat down to write a love song, "Total Eclipse of the Heart" isn't exactly what he might come up with. "Bad for Good" seems to be mostly about cruising the streets, and "I'd Do Anything for Love" is so interesting because it's just a little bit off what you'd be expecting it to be. Also highly entertaining is Steinman's 1989 effort Original Sin with his girl group Pandora's Box. It was bigger in the U.K. than in the United States, although the title track was later re-used in the U.S. as the theme to the Alec Baldwin stinker The Shadow. It's too over the top for any normal music fan to appreciate, but it contains one of my favorite Steinman lines: "All I wanted was a piece of the night..." |