I have often said to myself that the worst thing anyone could say to me is 'yes'. There are times when we need to be told 'no', because we cannot see for ourselves that we are headed down the wrong path. Saying 'no' is not an easy thing, and it can lead to hard feelings and strained relationships, but honesty is often the thing we need the most. Much like how a mirror gives us an inverted image of who we are, our own perception of ourselves (and our talents) is similarly skewed by the limits of our senses.
When we make a mistake that is so glaring, and so avoidable, it is one of the saddest things we can see happen before our eyes. Or our ears, in this case.
Meat Loaf wanted to pay tribute to his musical partner Jim Steinman before they ran out of time. That's an admirable goal, and it makes everything I'm going to say from here on out sound a bit mean, but oh well. The result of that desire is not just one of the worst albums ever recorded, but something so pitiful and depressing it works against its own goal, shifting from an ode for a decades-long friendship to a burned out chunk of coal that reminds us how cold and dirty we feel digging through the soot and ash of the now dead fire.
There are two factors that made this record the equivalent of a true-crime podcast; 1) The songs, and 2) Meat's voice.
Let's start with the songs. Jim Steinman is my favorite songwriter of all time, and he is the only person I might use the words 'musical hero' to describe, and yet I am able to sit here and say that he also wrote plenty of garbage. His early musicals were filled with scraps of ideas that either never worked, or needed to be put into new context. He was famous for recycling himself, in part because his well of inspiration dried up relatively early in his life. I have gone through the exact same thing, so I certainly sympathize with that position, but it doesn't make the bad ideas any better.
For this record, Meat Loaf scraped together whatever residue of ink was left from Steinman's pen. He pulled out "Going All The Way", which had been recorded in demo form as a potential album anchor for a female singer, and the classic "Loving You Is A Dirty Job". They are real songs, and good songs, which were meant to be joined by Steinman's last great composition, "What Part Of My Body Hurts The Most?", although it seems Steinman was protective of letting a broken Meat Loaf anywhere near that one.
The rest of the album is made up of bits and pieces from the old musicals, none of which work as full songs, nor do they have anything to do with the Meat Loaf sound. They are Steinman, yes, but they are theater, not rock and roll. We do not want or need to hear Meat trying to sing Vaudeville numbers, especially when they use the 'turn around' motif from "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" before Steinman knew what to do with it.
The bigger issue, though, is Meat Loaf himself. His voice at this point was completely shot. He sounds like a red-lined recording, but he isn't. His voice warbles, croaks, and has a fluttering strobe of silence that will make you think you speakers weren't working properly. They are, it's his voice that wasn't working.
What's worse is that they pair him for three duets, all of which highlight just how decayed his voice became, as the other singers are cock-slapping him (metaphorically) with their talent, akin to the boner joke in "Speaking In Tongues" that is the worst one Steinman ever wrote. We can't write this whole thing off as an unprofessional bit of recording failure when we hear the other singers, especially Ellen Foley from the original "Bat Out Of Hell" album, still sounding so good.
It's a crime against music that no one was able to stand up to Meat and tell him he didn't have it anymore, and shouldn't have been recording. You can hear the creeping specter of death in his voice, which makes this album less about the potential loss of Steinman and more about the inevitable loss of Meat Loaf. He might have had years left to live, but the character died making this album. Meat Loaf was no more.
What pisses me off the most about this album isn't just that it's terrible, or that it sounds like elder abuse and exploitation, but that it tarnished my memories of Meat Loaf. His music has meant more to me than anyone else's, and I can no longer hear his best work without knowing it ended this way. We don't always get to choose our final words, but we are in control of what we say, just in case our time is up. Meat Loaf used what were his last musical words to tell us all he had no shame, no pride in his output, and that he actually thought this was a tribute to Jim Steinman.
Did this album only see the light of day because the music business is a business, and someone saw money in the project? I don't know, but what I do know is that if the industry actually was what people claim it to be, there would have been people there to protect the legacy of their investment, and to stop them from making an album as sad as this one.
It wasn't brave to make "Braver Than We Are", it was cowardly. It was a damn shame no one could convince Meat Loaf, the producer, the band, the guests, or the label, that this simply wasn't good enough. It was an embarrassment, and I say that knowing full well the look people give you when you say you're a Meat Loaf fan. Most of the time, I wear that badge with pride. When I think about this album... I can only think about the compulsion for self-harm.
That's what this album is to me.
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