Jim Steinman's a poet. But Wagner don't know it.

Imagine my surprise (and delight) at finding myself in the car talking to my kids about the seminal 1977 Meatloaf album Bat Out Of Hell.

Prompted by them I hasten to add.

They having been prompted by the live TV butchering of the eponymous song by this year’s enduring X-Factor joke contestant, Wagner.

If you haven’t seen it, I’ve embedded it below for your viewing “pleasure”.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrt5jDbLbdk]

Anyway.

Back in the car, with the kids…

Imagine my surprise (and dubious delight) at finding myself able to quote, verbatim, lengthy passages not just from Bat Out Of Hell but also from songs like Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad and Paradise By Dashboard Light.

Pretty impressive, methinks, given that the last time I actually played the album (on cassette) was in sixth form back in 1984.

(Further proof, if proof were needed, that a man’s head is full of all sorts of superfluous, irrelevant and utterly interesting nonsense.)

I’ve written before about my love of idiosyncratic language.

And Bat Out Of Hell is a super-saturated solution of quirky, cod-heroic lyrics.

To the point of being poetic.

So here, inspired in unlikely but nonetheless strangely befitting fashion by a Brazilian ex-lion tamer, is an anthology of Bat Out Of Hell Lyrics written by Jim Steinman.

Bat Out Of Hell

Like a bat out of hell

I’ll be gone when the morning comes

When the night is over like a bat out of hell

I’ll be gone gone gone

Like a bat out of hell I’ll be gone when the morning comes

But when the day is done

And the sun goes down

And the moonlight’s shining through

Then like a sinner before the gates of heaven

I’ll come crawling on back to you

Paradise By Dashboard Light (Praying For The End Of Time)

I couldn’t take it any longer

Lord I was crazed

When the feeling came upon me

Like a tidal wave

I started swearing to my god and on my mother’s grave

That I would love you to the end of time

I swore that I would love you to the end of time

So now I’m praying for the end of time

To hurry up and arrive

‘Cause if I gotta spend another minute with you

I don’t think that I can really survive

I’ll never break my promise or forget my vow

But God only knows what I can do right now

I’m praying for the end of time

It’s all that I can do

Praying for the end of time

So that I can

End. My. Time. With. You.