Things I did not know, sort of in order of surprise:
- Jim Steinman wrote “Total Eclipse of the Heart”.
- He wrote it for Meat Loaf.
- As part of a vampire musical.
After seeing Meat Loaf singing on TV, she told Muff Winwood, a producer at the label, that she should work with Mr. Steinman, who wrote all the tracks on Meat Loaf’s blockbuster 1977 debut album, “Bat Out of Hell,” including the hits “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” and “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad.”
“Muff looked at me like I was barmy and told me that Jim would never do it,’” Ms. Tyler later recalled. “‘I just want you to ask him,’ I said.”
Intrigued by her voice, Mr. Steinman invited her to his apartment in Manhattan to run through “Total Eclipse of the Heart” — which, he told her, he had originally written for an unfinished musical about the vampire Nosferatu.
With its rock-opera bombast bordering on the Wagnerian, the song seemed like a natural fit for Meat Loaf. But “around the time we were recording,” Ms. Tyler later told The Guardian, “Meat Loaf had lost his voice.”
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