Songoftheday 3/22/19 - You can't run away forever, but there's nothing wrong with getting a good head start...
from the album Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell (1993)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #13 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 13
Today's song of the day comes from rock singer/actor Meat Loaf, who pulled off one of the biggest "comebacks" of pop music in the fall of 1993 with his #1 hit "I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That" from his album Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell. While that song was dominating mainstream radio, rock stations were also playing another album cut, "Life Is A Lemon And I Want My Money Back", which ended up climbing to #17 on the Mainstream Rock radio chart in Billboard magazine. The second physical single from the project would be another epic story-song, "Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through". Written by his collaborator and producer Jim Steinman, the song originally was intended to be on Meat Loaf's next album after Bat Out Of Hell back in 1981, but legal quarrels between the two as well as the record company caused Steinman to go out on his own to put out the album Bad For Good. With singer Rory Dodd (who happened to be the counterpart voice in Bonnie Tyler's Steinman-written "Total Eclipse Of The Heart"), the single became Steinman's own first top-40 hit in the U.S. at #32, while climbing to #14 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart...
So when Meat and Steinman reconciled and got back for the Bat sequel, it made sense to pull out "Rock And Roll Dreams Come Through" for the project, and the overblown production was just as successful...
"Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through" became the second top-40 pop hit from Bat Out Of Hell II in March of 1994. The song climbed to #25 on the Mainstream Rock radio chart in Billboard, and crossed over to make it to #24 on their Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") format tally. Internationally, the record peaked at #4 in Canada and #6 in New Zealand, and reached the top-40 in the UK (#11), Austria (#17), Australia (#18), Sweden (#18), Ireland (#19), Belgium (#23), Germany (#26), and the Netherlands (#26).
(Click below to see the rest of the post)
Here's Marvin (Meat Loaf's real first name) performing the song in 1994...
Next up, an audio from a year earlier on tour in Wales...
And lastly, live in Sydney in 2012...
Up tomorrow: British girl group wants you to stick around.
Comments