Songwriter Jim Steinman has died at the age of 73. But how many of his greatest hits can you sing along to? Here are Jim Steinman’s Greatest Hits
Jim Steinman, the colourful composer behind hits like Bat Out Of Hell and Total Eclipse Of The Heart, has died at the age of 73. Singer Meat Loaf, with whom Steinman scored some of his biggest hits, said goodbye with the words: “Fly Jimmy Fly”.
But how many of his hits do you know, and do you remember the singers? We count down Jim Steinman’s Top Ten Greatest Hits.
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10. Meat Loaf, “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)”
A surprise hit after Meat Loaf reunited with Jim Steinman for a follow-up to Bat Out of Hell in 1993, I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That) was 12 minutes long in its album version, but even cut down for radio it clocks in at 5:03. It still packs in plenty of typical Steinman heartache, lust, and mystery, and Steinman never explained exactly what it was he would never do.
09. Celine Dion, “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now”
Influenced by Wuthering Heights (the book, not the song) and originally recorded by female trio Pandora’s Box, this romantic power balled wasn’t written for a male singer, but Meat Loaf later recorded it anyway. But it was a hit in 1996 for Celine Dion, accompanied by a spooky video set in a gothic mansion. “It’s like Heathcliff digging up Cathy’s corpse and dancing with it in the cold moonlight,” Steinman said. “You can’t get more extreme, operatic, or passionate than that.”
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08. Bonnie Tyler, “Holding Out for a Hero”
From the soundtrack for 1984 movie Footloose, this song was written without a singer in mind, and it was Jim Steinman who recommended Bonnie Tyler. The song wasn’t an immediate hit, but it has become a karaoke favourite, and has also appeared, perhaps not entirely unironically, in other movies, including Shrek 2 and Angry Birds.
07. Meat Loaf, “Paradise by the Dashboard Light”
Featured on Bat Out of Hell with Meat Loaf and Ellen Foley singing, Paradise is perhaps the ultimate ‘sex in a car’ song, clocking in at an impressive eight minutes (not bad for their first time) and told in four parts. It’s regarded as one of Steinman’s most ambitious and tongue-in-check epic songs, and was a No 1 hit in the Netherlands, though it only reached 39 in the American Billboard Hot 100.
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06. The Sisters of Mercy, “More”
Proof that Steinman’s songs would work for just about anyone, his work with goth rockers Sisters of Mercy started on 1987’s This Corrosion, described as frontman Andrew Eldritch as a “disco party run by the Borgias”, which was their first U.K. Top 10 hit. Steinman returned on 1990’s Vision Thing, co-writing and producing More, a blend of goth and metal. “[He] really knows how to make a wonderfully stupid record. Totally outrageous,” Eldritch once said of Steinman. “Every time you think to yourself, do we really want to go this far, and you say to Jim, ‘Jim, are you sure about this?’ and anybody else will go, ‘Don’t do it!’ Jim goes, ‘More! More! More people, singing!’ It works.”
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