Songoftheday 2/23/13 - I know just how to whisper and I know just how to cry, I know just where to find the answers and I know just how to lie...

Air Supply - "Making Love Out Of Nothing At All" 
from the album Greatest Hits (1983)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #2 (three weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 17

Today's Song of the Day is by the band led by the Seigfried and Roy of Soft Rock, Air Supply, who by 1983 were still successful though not quite as big as their start, when they racked up seven straight top-5 hits. Their third worldwide album Now And Forever did give them their seventh, "Even The Nights Are Better", but the two following singles "Young Love" and "Two Less Lonely People In The World" both crested at #38. It seemed that the mainstream music tastes were drifting away a bit from adult contemporary as the second "British Invasion" of new wave groups like Culture Club and Duran Duran swept in. To stay current, they would have to "toughen up" their act a little. So in walks Meat Loaf's muse.

Jim Steinman was responsible for the grandiose songwriting that singer Meat Loaf a household name (no pun intended) in the late 70s, with his classic Bat Out Of Hell album all written by Jim. However, by the singer's third solo album, disputes over money between the two and his record company caused Steinman to pull two songs he originally offered to the Loaf, "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" and "Making Love Out Of Nothing At All". Now free to offer to other singers, Steinman not only let Air Supply record the song, but produced it as well, scuttling the group's normal backing players for Max Weinberg and Roy Bittan from Springsteen's band and Rick Derringer providing the guitar solo. The result sounded an awful lot like a Meat Loaf record with a much much higher voice on it, and it would for a moment return Air Supply back to the heights of the charts...

"Making Love..." became one of their biggest hits, peaking at #2 and spending more than six months on the pop chart, as well as achieving the same rank on the Adult Contemporary list. Surprisingly, the song missed the top-40 in both England and their native Australia.

(Click below to see the rest of the post)


Ten years later, another beneficiary of Steinman's, Bonnie Tyler, covered the song to even more dramatic effect. She also missed the top-40 at #45, but it was a big hit in Belgium...

In 2003, rapper Juelz Santana sampled the song for his debut album's "Monster Music"...(NSFW)

Lastly, in 2005, Carrie Underwood took on the song on American Idol...

...lastly, here's Air Supply with the song more recently...

Up tomorrow: the other half of the Steinman trump.