Some albums politely ask for your attention.
Bat Out of Hell kicks the fucking door off its hinges, rides a motorcycle through your living room, sets the curtains on fire, and then asks why everybody is staring.
Naturally, I adore it.
Gary told me I could take over Melody Monday this week, which was either an act of tremendous trust or a catastrophic lapse in judgment. Either way, we’re listening to Meat Loaf, and if you’ve somehow never heard this album before, the first thing you need to understand is that nobody involved had any interest whatsoever in restraint.
The title track is almost ten minutes long. Ten minutes! Most songs have introduced themselves, made their point and gone home before Bat Out of Hell has finished warming up. But that’s the beauty of it. Jim Steinman’s songs don’t merely happen. They arrive with lighting cues.
The piano races. The guitars scream. Meat Loaf sings like his life depends on reaching the back row of a theater that doesn’t actually exist. Everything is enormous.
And somehow it works.
You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth follows, beginning with that wonderfully ridiculous spoken introduction before exploding into one of the album’s biggest singalong choruses. This entire record understands something modern entertainment occasionally forgets: being sincere does not require being subdued.
You can mean every word while wearing a cape.
Heaven Can Wait slows things down, and normally this is where an album like this risks losing me. But Meat Loaf could sell melodrama because he never sounded embarrassed by it. There’s no little wink telling you, “Don’t worry, I know this is ridiculous.”
Of course it’s ridiculous.
Commit harder.
Then comes All Revved Up with No Place to Go, which sounds exactly like the title suggests: too much energy trapped in a body that desperately needs somewhere to put it. I relate.
But let’s stop pretending we’re not all waiting for Paradise by the Dashboard Light.
What an absolutely insane song.
It’s a miniature musical about two horny young people making terrible decisions in a car, complete with baseball commentary, escalating desperation and one of the greatest “be careful what you promise while aroused” lessons in musical history.
I respect educational material.
The song shouldn’t work. It changes styles, changes perspectives, practically changes genres midway through, and somehow all of it builds toward two people realizing that the thing they desperately wanted five minutes ago may have ruined the rest of their lives.
Romance!
This is why subtle people are exhausting.
Then there’s Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad, probably the song here most capable of existing outside the album’s giant theatrical machinery. It’s sad without becoming pathetic and clever without sounding pleased with itself. Meat Loaf sells the hell out of it because he sounds like a man confessing something he’d rather not admit.
By the time For Crying Out Loud closes the album, there is nowhere left to go but bigger, so naturally that’s where it goes. Strings, piano, enormous vocals, emotion piled upon emotion until the whole thing finally collapses under the weight of its own glorious excess.
I wouldn’t want every album to sound like Bat Out of Hell.
Dear gods, we’d all be exhausted.
But I wish more artists understood what this record understands: if you’re going to be dramatic, be dramatic. If you’re going to sing about lust, heartbreak, motorcycles, bad decisions and doomed romance, don’t stand politely in the corner apologizing for yourself.
Climb onto the table.
Point at the heavens.
Make the fucking chandeliers shake.
Bat Out of Hell remains one of those albums where excess isn’t a flaw. Excess is the entire point.
And if Paradise by the Dashboard Light comes on in the Halls, I’m absolutely singing both parts.
Probably on the table.
Theia hates when I do that.
What’s your favorite album that has absolutely no concept of restraint? Sound off in the comments.
