12 Most Overlooked Meat Loaf Songs From Every Album

From the outside, Meat Loaf's next album seemed like another statement of intent: his first without any involvement from Jim Steinman at all. Recorded in a hurry to meet his contractual obligations to Epic Records, it did not go well.

Supposedly Steinman had originally offered him Total Eclipse Of The Heart and Making Love Out Of Nothing At All but Epic had flatly refused to pay the recording budget that the hugely dramatic songs required: the songs then became huge hits for Bonnie Tyler and Air Supply, respectively.

To hear Meat Loaf himself talk, the Midnight At The Lost And Found album was practically released without him, a collection of demos and half-finished tunes that he walked out on in despair. That left veteran producer Tom Dowd to finish the album, and the lack of creative direction shows.

However, the title track (notable for being one of the only tunes from the 1980s to make it onto the subsequent Best Of album) is actually a cracker, a three-minute rock number which, shorn of the melodrama that had made Meat Loaf a star, created the required theatricality through a Wild West, country-fried riff and percussion married to a classic lost-souls-at-the-dive-bar narrative.

It's catchy as hell and great driving music, even if you can tell that the big man's heart isn't really in it…