12 Most Overlooked Meat Loaf Songs From Every Album

3. Hang Cool Teddy Bear (2010) - Elvis In Vegas

Unusually for Meat Loaf’s discography, the brilliantly named Hang Cool Teddy Bear is all light and no shade. That’s a good thing and a bad thing: there's not a single power ballad in sight, but after an hour of propulsive Americana you'd be forgiven if upon hearing the thirteenth track begin as more of the same, you began to check out a little.

Elvis In Vegas won't let that happen. The last song on Meat's brilliantly named 2010 album (written by Jon Bon Jovi and two of his frequent collaborators, the ubiquitous Desmond Child and Nashville mainstay Billy Falcon) is an uplifting guitar-led stomper on which the veteran singer sounds twenty years younger than he actually was.

A vibrant pop hook married to a crunching heavy rock riff clears the decks straight away, while a strangely sombre version of the tried-and-tested jingling piano figure adds some unexpected pathos to a tune telling the story of a kid running away from an abusive home with nothing but the shirt on his back and, hitching a ride west, having an apocalyptic epiphany watching the King do his thing in Las Vegas.

The details are all wrong (his father's house was in Texas, not Tennessee; he was in his late teens, not fifteen; he went to California, not Nevada) but the main thrust of the story is a retelling of Meat Loaf's own early life, and how music saved it. It's a stunning end to an album and, given that it also features the last truly great Meat Loaf vocal performance, a fitting capstone to a career dedicated to embellishing the truth to tell a better story.