For Lit Hub: God of Teenage Appetites: On the Undeniable Allure of Meat Loaf

Meat Loaf performs at Wembley Arena in 1982. Photo by Pete Still/Getty Images.

In Literary Hub this week, I wrote about teenage sexual angst, Beauty and the Beast fairy tales, monsters, Meat Loaf, and the video for his song I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That). Read an excerpt below:

“When I saw Meat Loaf’s iconic I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That) for the first time on MTV, I had just finished eighth grade. It was… I mean… oh my god. This music video had everything: revving engine sounds; a mausoleum; a Michael Bay-directed helicopter, car, and motorcycle chase; a foggy blue forest; angst; a sexy fat man in Halloween makeup smashing a literal hall of mirrors; flashlights; dorky lyrics; sexual longing; an opulent bi-curious bedroom set, lesbian succubi absolutely included; and so, so many candles. It was a power ballad missile of queasy erotic awakening aimed straight at my 14-year-old heart.

I was powerless to resist it.

The pure old-fashioned melodrama of it all. The absolute cheesiness. The passion. It was glorious. It was ridiculous. It was histrionic. It was camp as fuck. It was a music video that asked, what if Quasimodo was an over-the-top bombastic 70s rock star and also sang like the Phantom of the Opera? What if a floor-length white dress could also show your whole underwear? What if you followed a fugitive hunchback through the dark woods and then bathed in your clothes by the light of a thousand burning tapers? What if backup singers? What if lightning? What if chandeliers?”

READ THE REST ON LITERARY HUB.

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