The Great Are Not Always Good

Like most figures in the music business who work primarily as songwriters or producers rather than performers, Jim Steinman wasn't a household name. However, anyone who's followed popular music over the past few decades almost certainly knows his work. Steinman, who died from kidney failure on April 19th at the age of 73, wrote and/or produced songs for everyone from Barbara Streisand and Celine Dion to Boyzone and The Sisters of Mercy during his long career. His most famous work of all - the one that ensured this musical familiarity - was composing songs for Meat Loaf's epic album Bat Out Of Hell.

A record that’s great, if not necessarily good, Bat Out Of Hell remains one of the best-selling albums of all time and one of the very few to spawn an explicit sequel. While the record was produced by Todd Rundgren, it also provides the prototypical example of Steinman's work and the sensibility it brings to popular culture. While many of his songs are clearly cut from the same cloth of yearning lyrics and contrasting dynamics, it would be facile to dismiss them as simply empty bombast. Fittingly for someone with a background in musical theater, including work with legendary director Joseph Papp at the New York Shakespeare Festival and a collaboration with Andrew Lloyd-Webber, Steinman approaches the pop song format like a dramatist.

Many of his biggest hits are best appreciated as miniature plays - showcasing intimate dramas between two people, even when only one voice is heard. Left in the Dark, a piece initially released on Steinman’s own album Bad For Good and later recorded by both Meat Loaf and Barbara Streisand, is a prime example. The song is effectively a monologue addressed to an unfaithful lover.

---

I should have known that it was coming to this, but I must have been blind.

I bet you still got a trace of her love in your eyes, and you've still got her eyes on your mind.

---

Aside from his work with Meat Loaf, Steinman's most iconic song is Total Eclipse of the Heart. A worldwide hit for Bonnie Tyler in 1983, it can easily be imagined as an internalized conversation.

---

(Turn around) Every now and then I know you'll never be the boy you always wanted to be.

(Turn around) But every now and then I know you'll always be the only boy who wanted me the way that I am.

---

Even a relatively straightforward rocker like Dead Ringer for Love, recorded as a duet between Meat Loaf and Cher, fits this mold, especially in a spoken mid-song interlude.

---

Boy: Oh! You got the kind of legs that do more than walk.

Girl: I don't have to listen to your whimpering talk.

Boy: Listen you got the kind of eyes that do more than see.

Girl: You got a lotta nerve to come on to me.

Boy: You got the kind of lips that do more than drink.

Girl: You got the kind of mind that does less than think. But, since I'm feeling kinda lonely and my defenses are low, why don't you give it a shot and get it ready to go? I'm looking for anonymous and fleeting satisfaction. I want to tell my daddy I'll be missing in action.

---

As the above lines make clear, Steinman the lyricist sometimes let down Steinman the dramatist. Then again, it's the nature of guilty pleasures to be enjoyed in spite of one element even as they’re loved for another. Given the choice between craftsmanship and feeling, Jim Steinman inevitably found his artistry in emotion. In a world full of technicians, even a flawed artist deserves our appreciation.