12 Most Overlooked Meat Loaf Songs From Every Album

12. Bat Out Of Hell (1977) - Heaven Can Wait

Because Bat Out Of Hell was almost all singles, and because those singles are part of the popular culture lexicon and are on every greatest hits package his labels ever put out, most people haven’t actually listened to the record itself. That’s a shame, because they’ve missed a treat, sitting quietly in the middle of side one: a four-and-a-half minute love song called Heaven Can Wait.

On a beast of a debut album full of lurid, full-throated swagger, Heaven Can Wait exists as an anomaly for two reasons. It was one of the only two songs on the record that wasn’t a single, and it’s a ballad without the power, just piano, strings and Meat Loaf’s plaintive, tremulous voice.

It’s the best vocal on the album, despite the lack of bombast, the first evidence that Aday didn’t have to blow a blood vessel to perfectly inhabit whatever character was sitting within the song waiting for him.

More than that, it’s sweet: there’s no blood, sweat and tears, no thunder and lightning, just a declaration of love that’s all the more touching for being so understated.