My Secret Shame: Meat Loaf

Celebrity Apprentice returns to NBC this Sunday.  Among this year’s contestants is one Mr. Marvin “Meat Loaf” Aday.  In anticipation of his appearance, we went through our archives and found where our Apprentice recapper confessed to his love of Meat Loaf.  Because we don’t believe in letting a secret shame stay secret, we’re pleased to present this appreciation of the man who found Paradise by the Dashboard Light.

I like to think of myself as a cool guy. This is largely erroneous, but I enjoy my illusions. I’ll admit that I don’t understand all this music that young people are listening too, especially with all this “downloading” they go on about. “Wait a minute,” I say from my rocking chair in front of the General Store, “you’re telling me that the only part of a CD that has actual value is the physical product and the music itself is inherently worthless? Don’t the wishes of the artist have any bearing in this?” Then they laugh at me. “Suck it, Gramps,” they often say, and then they leave me to my whittlin’.

I got off topic there, but the point is that I don’t follow a lot of new music. But, you know, Elvis Costello has about a thousand albums. Still, I have a Secret Shame in my music collection: Meat Loaf’s Greatest Hits Album. And not just a Greatest Hits, but a German import of “Hits from Hell”. This CD is 18 tracks of pure over-the-top bombastic opera rock, with lyrics that range from stupid to gloriously stupid, and I love it.