Couldn't Have Said It Better

Whether or not you like his music, most would have to admit that Meat Loaf is one of the good guys. Having set a musical template with the opening track of his debut album, he has spent some 25 years sticking to his guns with varying degrees of success.

Tasting the lows as well as the highs, nothing has detracted him from his mission to produce some of the most hysterical, ambitious, theatrical rock ’n’ roll in US musical history.

With its huge choruses, female vocal sparring partners and sprawling epics of songs, Couldn’t Have Said It Better could have come at any point in his career but to criticise Meat Loaf for not moving with the times is missing the point entirely. Jim Steinman may have gone (replaced by Motley Crue’s Nikki Sixx amongst others) yet Meat Loaf can still take any song and make it his own. It’s all hugely silly (especially the spoken word section on ‘Tear It Down’ that traces Meat’s Texan roots to the Fall of the Alamo) but it’s a hell of a lot of fun, a lot more than most of the guitar types doing the rounds. If you’ve ever shaken a leg – however furtively – to ‘Bat Out Of Hell’, ‘Dead Ringer’, ‘Modern Girl’ and the rest, you could do worse than give this a try.