A lot of you probably have no idea who Jim Steinman is, but I bet every one of you has heard his work. If you've listened to early Meat Loaf, or pumped your fist to the overbearing bombast of Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse Of The Heart," you've heard Steinman's writing and production work. He specialized in stuffing his songs with ridiculous instrumentation, an obscene number of drum fills, and lyrics bursting with the sort of prose one would usually find in a notebook belonging to a teenage fan of renaissance faires.
And I fucking love it.
I've mentioned before that Streets Of Fire had a big influence on developing some of my nascent musical tastes when I was a young 'un, and Steiman wrote and produced the two songs sung by the movie's heroine. On the album they were credited to Fire Inc., but that was just a name given to a bunch of studio musicians ... there never was any actual Fire Inc.I've included both songs from the soundtrack below, and when you listen to them, really marvel at the balls it must've taken to actually put these things together. "Nowhere Fast" has what seems like a dozen separate sections before the chorus even kicks in, and right when you think things can't get any grander, epic, or ridiculous, the choir-led coda of "Godspeed" takes it one notch higher. And "Tonight Is What It Means To be Young?" Jesus, just listen to the lyrics. They're awesome.
So, yes, both songs are kind of silly, but at the same time they're so earnest, and Steinman just goes so balls out throwing every studio trick he know into the mix, that they remain two of my favorite songs, ever. And I'm not being facetious. I mean it. I love these songs.
MP3: Fire Inc. - "Nowhere Fast"
MP3: Fire Inc. - "Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young"
No comments:
Post a Comment