Meat – real name Michael Lee Aday – was in an expansive mood when Woman’s Day caught up with the superstar for the release of his thirteenth studio album, with the singer criticising industry “expert” advice given on shows like The Voice and American Idol.
“I disagree with some of the advice they give. Like the advice would be ‘you have to feel the song’ – I disagree with that. You have to become the song. Then they say ‘you have to learn how to control the stage’ – I disagree with that. No, you have to learn how to control the room.”
He went on to criticise how the judges often praise the artists for their interaction with the audience in the front row.
“You’ll hear one of the judges go – ‘I love what you did with the front row.’ I would hit them up side [the head] because when you do that, you make the people in the back feel like they’re missing out, like it’s an inside joke,” he says.
Meat Loaf doesn’t approve of the The Voice‘s coaching methods.
Meat says his newest collaboration with Jim Steinman – Braver Than We Are – is “the best thing we’ve ever done”.
“This record is completely different to anything we’ve done. The record is a piece of art, it’s a painting,” he tells Woman’s Day, comparing it to their first album Bat Out Of Hell.
When they started their collaboration in 2013 Meat and Steinman picked up where they left off with the first track.
“Jimmy wrote the first song Who Needs the Young at the age of 19,” Meat says.
“In 1977 a vinyl or rock record couldn’t be any longer than 49 and a half minutes and we already had 52 minutes, [so] we had to speed up Bat Out Of Hell, to get it below the 50 minute mark.”
Meat Loaf pictured performing with backing singer Karla DeVito in 1981.
He says this album is the best thing he and Jim have ever done, and hopes Australia may hold the key to making it a success.
“When Bat out of hell came out, everybody hated it,” he says.
“It took that record ten months, and it was actually Australia that really started to break the record with the single Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth, and they broke that too with Anything For Love – so maybe Australia will break this one for me!”
The 68-year-old has enjoyed an incredible career and says the secret to his success is to never listen to your own songs. “Unless there are major problems, you know if there’s technical problems, if I’m having a problem – whatever, I never listen to myself sing.”
Watch the adorable moment Meatloaf gives advice to a young James Corden in 1995. Post continues…
But for his new album, Meat can’t seem to get enough.
“The album literally is hypnotic. I have listened to this record, accumulatively more than all the other records I’ve made together. I have listened to this record, I would say 50 times.”
When asked if he would be planning to tour the album from beginning to end he simply said, “I’m too old for that.”
“People forget, Vanity Hell is ten minutes long, and Paradise is nine, if we did the full version of Anything for Love – it’s almost twelve. I’d literally be up there for four and a half hours.
And it seems all these years later, the singer is staying true to his sage advice that he once gave a young James Corden.
“I never give up and no matter what I’m doing whether it’s an interview, a show, whether it’s a film, whether it’s a play, I give everything I’ve got, every moment that I’m there.”
The Grammy Award winner is a living musical legend.
