I just saw the video. It had kids with no eyes, boys in suits, and ninjas. Yes, ninjas.
Weird.
Trust me, when the song first came out in the 80’s, MTV literally played that stupid video twice hourly.
Chris W
I think that’s incorrect, actually. Jim Steinman, who wrote Total Eclipse, also wrote a great many of Meat Loaf’s songs, including the two you mention. Steinman’s stuff is readily recognizable - in addition to about two thirds of Meat Loaf’s hit songs, he also wrote Making Love Out Of Nothing At All (Air Supply), Read 'Em And Weep (Barry Manilow), It’s All Coming Back To Me Now (Celine Dion), and Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young (from the Streets Of Fire soundtrack), to name just a few.
OK, I knew there was a 'loaf connection there somewhere. I didn’t know who this Steinman guy was. Thanks for setting me straight.
While I had the right song playing in my mind, I was visualizing Bonnie Tyler’s other video, “Holding on for a Hero” (or whatever it was called) with the burning house and the guy on the horse and Bonnie belting out her tunes in the wind.
I just d/l’ed the TEotH video and watched it…The ninjas and flying choirboys were a nice touch.
“in addition to about two thirds of Meat Loaf’s hit songs, he also wrote Making Love Out Of Nothing At All (Air Supply), Read 'Em And Weep (Barry Manilow), It’s All Coming Back To Me Now (Celine Dion), and Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young (from the Streets Of Fire soundtrack), to name just a few.”
I know all these songs and I never made the connection, but they all do have something in common don’t they? Thanks for the info, LifeOnWry.
Slight hijack: Jim Steinman FIRST wrote “Total Eclipse of the Heart” as the love theme for a musical he was hoping to get produced Off-Broadway. Specifically, a musical based on Roman Polanski’s “The Fearless Vampire Killers.” The song was a duet, in which a suave vampire is trying to seduce an innocent young girl. She’s supposed to be simultaneously enchanted by the vampire and terrified of him.
Steinman was a nobody at the time, and was unable to find a backer for the musical, so he recycled much of the music. Some of it appears in movie soundtracks he composed. As for “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” he changed the lyrics a bit, and made it a power ballad for Bonnie Tyler.
Fast forward twenty years: Steinman is now a successful, respected songwriter with a lot of hits to his credit. So, he was finally able to get the musical produced. And it opened on Broadway last December: “Dance of the Vampires,” starring Michael Crawford.
Happy ending? Hmm… not quite. The critics HATED it! The reviews were as bad as any I’ve ever seen! Nonetheless, I saw it when I was i New York for the holidays, and I mostly enjoyed it. The music was wonderful, and Crawford sang it marvelously. The main problem with the show (and in this regard, I agree with the critics) is that it can’t decide whether to be a goofy comedy or a serious, romantic thriller. The MUSIC seems to have been written with (mostly) serious intent, but the book was not- it’s nothing but broad, campy, gay humor.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with campy humor and there’s nothing wrong with serious music, but the combination of the two makes for a schizophrenic musical (yes, I KNOW schizophrenic doesn’t mean a split personality, but humor me). Imagine “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” with the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera.” The people who like Webber would be turned off by the campy humor, while the people who like the campy humor would be bored stiff by the music.
I mean, when Michael Crawford is speaking, he has to put on a ridiculous accent and ham it up… but when he sings, he’s dignified and performs his songs superbly. It’s a VERY mixed bag.
[continuing the Steinman hijack] - Once you recognize Steinman’s “formula”, it becomes really easy to detect his hand in a song. He’s a weird one, really. He has this operatic style, and good, if somewhat repetitive, lyrics with lots of clever wordplay. He’s also a hell of a recycler, blending several songs into one at whim. The tune for Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out For A Hero” was also recorded by Steinman as “Bad For Good” which was then mixed with a Meat Loaf song called “Nowhere Fast” and recorded as a completely DIFFERENT “Nowhere Fast” for the movie Streets of Fire!
No, there was no relation between the two. The song was not used in or around the movie.