If you want my views of history, then there’s something you should know: the three men I admire most are Curly, Larry, Moe.
Michael Lee Aday (Meat Loaf), “Everything Louder than Everything Else”
Everyone has skeletons in their closets.
Some people eat their boogers. Some people close the elevator door on other people. Some people use avocados in their brownies to make them healthier. I shudder at the thought.
I, on the other hand, have a skeleton of a different sort. A crutch, really. A vice.
It’s Meat Loaf.
Not the food. The food is mediocre at best (don’t come for me on that one; there are SO many better meat products to indulge in). No, I’m talking about the rock and roll hero himself, Meat Loaf (whose name, for some reason, my fingers don’t like typing, so it ends up being either Meat Log or *gulp* Meat Load. Neither of which are pretty, so let’s hope for no typos in this post).
I’ve been sort of toying for a while with doing a post about this, and my mind keeps coming back to the same thought: I started this blog so I could write about whatever I wanted.
And I happen to want to write about Meat Loaf right now, so if you don’t WANT to read a blog post chronicling my deep and borderline unhealthy love for greasy rock music, then stop reading here (a bad choice on your part, but then again, I’m not my brother’s keeper).
Aaaaand now that all the squares have left, let’s talk Loaf.
I feel like this post was a long time coming because I refer to Meat Loaf all. The. Damn. Time. I mean, probably half of the photos I post on Instagram have some lyric from a Meat Loaf song as the caption, whether it’s relevant or not.
(Editor’s note: it’s never relevant.)
Any of my friends, especially my college friends, have probably thought the following question at least 600 times:
What is so great about Meat Loaf?
(I basically forced Meat Loaf on my friends at school, and I’m not even sorry about it. I was trying to educate you guys! That’s what college is for, right? Right??)
To be honest, the obsession really actually starts and ends with Jim Steinman. Hardly anyone knows that name, but he wrote most, if not all, of Meat Loaf’s songs back in the 70s, 80s and 90s (at the very least, he wrote all of the ones that I adore. Which are many, indeed).
The songs on Meat’s top albums (and yes, I’m going to call him “Meat,” because he and I are tight like that) that Steinman wrote, lots of them are dark. They bring to mind images of smoke and flames, motorcycles and sweat, rage and heartbreak and jealousy and misfits and basically, it’s glorious.
I’m going to go with a full disclaimer here: I don’t know all of the B.E. (Before Emma) rock star drama that went down in the Meat Loaf/Steinman career. I’m a nerd, but not THAT big of a nerd. What resonates with me and always has, is the music.
My brain is a chaotic place. It never slows down, and lots of the time out here by myself, the thoughts are centered around being lonely. I have a community and I have friends, but when the witching hour hits and I’m alone in my apartment, I feel like there needs to be some sort of release.
Meat Loaf helps with that. That music transports me. I feel like I’m wearing leather in a skunky bar with grease under my chipped black fingernails.
I feel like a rebel. I feel like a badass.
I feel free.
Now, in reality, what is actually happening is I’m giving myself whiplash in my bathroom after a shower at 11:30 p.m. when I should have been in bed AN HOUR ago, singing angrily to a Meat Loaf/Jim Steinman chef d’oeuvre, but THAT IS BESIDE THE POINT.
It makes me feel like me, only a cooler version. A version that can walk through a cloud of cigarette smoke without making a face or coughing up a lung. A version that has actually ridden a motorcycle. Not on the back of one, mind you. I mean like full, captain-of-my-own-ship action.
Everyone has a song, an album or an artist that when you listen, it just aligns your chakras.
Boom. That’s Meat Loaf.
Still wondering “what the hell, Emma”? Let me try to break it down for you.
They’re stories.
Meat Loaf songs aren’t short. Some are a relatively normal length, but think about the one Meat song everyone knows, “I Would Do Anything for Love.” The whole song, not the radio edit, is like 12 minutes long.
But it’s more than a typical “verse-one-chorus-verse-two-chorus-wrap-it-up” musical number. The songs are stories. They need time to develop. You don’t get in and out easily, nor should you. Nobody writes a story like Jim Steinman, and nobody tells it like Meat Loaf. It’s really more like an experience than a song. Which, in my personal and professional opinion, is what music should be.
They’re sexy.
Okay, hear me out. Objectively, no. Meat Loaf is not sexy. He certainly doesn’t do ~it~ for me, but all of the STRONG suggestive material in the songs he sings?
Yeah, okay, it makes me feel things! I am HUMAN!
When I list some best lines here shortly, you’ll see what I mean. You might get the sweats.
The…meat sweats. No? Yeah, you’re right; that’s pretty gross. ANYWAY
The imagery.
As a writer myself, I understand the value of descriptive imagery. If I can listen to a song and physically smell the motorcycle burning rubber or feel the heat of the sun beating down my back, then I’m sold.
LISTEN to the lyrics. There’s just such a huge amount of humanity in them. Steinman’s stuff is dark and rebellious, but there’s a lot of sadness and power in the imagery. Seriously, jokes all aside, his writing has helped influence my own writing. Maybe not my BLOG writing…
The performance capability.
If you’ve hung out with me for any extended period of time, I have probably put on a Meat Loaf performance or two (or ten) within your immediate vicinity. It happens. The spirit moves me. These days, because I live alone, I do a lot of putting on my rubber cleaning gloves and NOT cleaning while listening to his music. Usually there’s lots of singing (another editor’s note: squawking) and dancing (tripping), with a broom as my Stratocaster.
All I’m saying is, when you know most of the songs by heart like I do, then it’s easy to put on the performance of a lifetime.
I’m assuming that if you’re STILL reading this fever dream of a post, you either a) are a fellow Meat Loaf groupie, b) love me to pieces and want to support my literary dreams or c) want to finish reading so you can make fun of me for being a dork.
However, for the post’s sake, I’m going to pretend you are all reading this because you want some good Meat recommendations. That’s my final gift to you, and you can either choose to accept the gift and play along or you can quietly (or not-so-quietly) ignore me.
So, without further adieu (or a-don’t, as it were), here are my top 5 Meat Loaf songs.
NUMBER 5: “Objects in the Rearview Mirror (May Appear Closer Than They Are)”
Album: Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell
Best line: “She used her body just like a bandage, she used my body just like a wound / I’ll probably never know where she disappeared, but I can see her rising up out of the backseat now, just like an angel rising up from a tomb.”
This song starts kind of sad, then goes to angry, and ends with romance. To me, it’s about reckoning with people and events from your past, especially if those people aren’t as deep in the past as you think they are (or want them to be). It’s good. REALLY good.
NUMBER 4: “Everything Louder Than Everything Else”
Album: Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell
Best line: “A wasted youth is better by far than a wise and productive old age.”
MAN, this song is good. SO MANY iconic lines, such a badass rebel attitude. Nothing like a good Meat Loaf song that makes you hate authority, order and people trying to boss you around. It’s FABULOUS.
NUMBER 3: “Paradise by the Dashboard Light”
Album: Bat Out of Hell
Best line: “Let me sleep on it, baby, baby, let me sleep on it.”
This is an absolute MUST-LISTEN. Want to talk about storytelling? How do Meat Loaf and Steinman, two people that I can’t even imagine in their youth, write and sing such a relatable song about young people DOING it? Seriously? I want to know, because the back and forthing in this song is unmatched (except by the next song in the ranking).
NUMBER 2: “Dead Ringer for Love”
Album: Dead Ringer
Best line: “I don’t know who you are, what you do, or where you go when you’re not around / I don’t know anything about you, baby, but you’re everything I’m dreaming of / I don’t know who you are, but you’re a real dead ringer for love.”
What’s better than an iconic Meat Loaf performance? I’ll tell you: an iconic Meat Loaf performance WITH CHER, that’s what. This song is hot; it’s funny and just generally outrageous (kind of like…me? But that’s not the point. FOCUS, Emma!). Another pro tip: watch the music video. It’s the best thing I’ve ever seen. I want to BE Cher, who sort of falls for a grimy-yet-talented singer at a bar, even though she acknowledges that he’s kind of gross?
(Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, that IS kind of relatable. Wait, am I Cher?!)
Also, I’m going to embed the video here because you can’t NOT watch it. Do yourself a favor and just take a couple minutes and watch it.
NUMBER 1: “Bat Out of Hell”
Album: Bat Out of Hell
Best line: “When the day is done and the sun goes down and the moonlight’s shining through / then like a sinner before the gates of Heaven, I’ll come crawling on back to you.”
I don’t really have a concept about what this song is about.
It’s just awesome, okay. The instrumental parts, the soft parts, the parts where it’s sad, the parts where it’s sweet, I DON’T CARE. I don’t even have a coherent thought to give you. Just listen to it and hear/feel what I’m talking about.
Whew. That’s out of my system. Now I won’t have a Meat Loaf-sized devil on my shoulder (yowza) every time I sit down to type a blog post. I have addressed my demons; I have spoken them out. It was the elephant in the room to me. Everyone’s passionate about something; one of mine is just cerebral, emotionally violent rock music.
What, isn’t yours?
Your Completely-Obsessed-and-Musically-Unhinged Servant,
Em
Photos courtesy of
http://www.jimsteinman.com/bioinfo.htm
http://www.rockyhorrorcostumelist.com/category/00-the-usual-suspects/09-ex-delivery-boy/
It's Raining Em 