Hear Meat Loaf’s Bombastic New Track With ‘Bat Out of Hell’ Songwriter
Meat Loaf has teamed up with songwriter Jim Steinman, who wrote most of the singer’s biggest hits going back to Bat Out of Hell, for a new album, Braver Than We Are. The first single, “Going All the Way,” is a multi-movement, symphonic-rock epic in the vein of “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” and “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)” with all the attendant melodrama of those hits. The song features additional vocals by Ellen Foley, who sang on “Paradise,” and Karla DeVito, who appeared in the “Paradise” video and sang Foley’s parts on the Bat Out of Hell tour.
The album, which will come out September 16th, features 10 never-before-released Steinman compositions; it contains the first tune he ever wrote up through his most recent songs, and it’s the fourth album in Meat Loaf‘s oeuvre whose tracks were written solely by Steinman. The songwriter also had final approval on the mix and presentation of the songs before they were deemed finished. Former Anthrax guitarist Paul Crook – who produced Meat Loaf’s last album, 2012’s Hell in a Handbasket – helmed the album and played guitar on it.
“It’s a tribute to Jim Steinman really,” Meat Loaf said in a statement. “It’s a tribute to both of us and our work together.”
In anticipation of the album, Meat Loaf is currently on tour and has dates scheduled through early July in Canada.
Steinman, who last contributed a string of songs to Meat Loaf’s 2006 sequel Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose, once eloquently described what his bombastic songs meant to him in a 1978 Rolling Stone profile of the singer. “My songs are anthems to those moments when you feel like you’re on the head of a match that’s burning,” Steinman said. “They’re anthems to the essence of rock & roll, to a world that despises inaction and loves passion and rebellion. They’re anthems to the kind of feeling you get listening to ‘Be My Baby’ by the Ronettes. That’s what I love about anthems – the fury, the melody and the passion.”
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