Posted on: September 13, 2010 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 0

This is one of the songs that broke Celine Dion huge in the adult contemporary market here in the United States. It is thus tied to eir, as pretty much anyone that was cognizant and listening to the radio heard eir rendition way too many times. Now, apparently this song was originally written for Meatloaf. I can understand that; “I’ll Do Anything For Love” has the same general type of feeling to it. To try to reclaim this song over a decade after Celine Dion started staking out eir claim to it is a much harder task for this once-a-decade-releasing crooner.

Will ey be able to do it, or will the framework of the song be such for most individuals listening in to declare it purely derivative, not adding anything new to what they assume was only a Celine Dion song? This single brings the radio edit and the album edit together for individual listeners to determine this. Meat Loaf sings this track with Marion Raven, who was not a name that was immediately recognizable to me. Apparently, ey is a Norwegian singer that used to be a part of M2M. M2M had two tracks hit the US billboard top 100, with “Don’t Say You Love Me” and “Mirror Mirror”. Thus, it is not completely as if Virgin stuck Marion with Meat Loaf to give eir rub, but there is some sense of that considering that a new Marion album is ostensibly in the works.

The use of two vocals in this track gives another dimension to the track that I do not recall was in the original recorded version. However, Meat Loaf has eir distinct style, while Marion struggles through a number of different styles to find something proper to match Meat Loaf’s output. In my honest opinion, it is when Marion gets into a Stevie Nicks-like mode where the strongest overall sound is achieved on this track. The four minute track runtime may seem a little long to some considering that they were saddled with a track of that length when Celine cut eir version, but there is enough differentiation in the tempo of the track to keep individuals interested. Meat Loaf does imbue this track with enough of eir animus to take back the track, and make listening to “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now” something that is not quite as embarrassing to admit as it once was.

Top Track: It’s All Coming Back To Me Now (single)

Rating: 6.5/10

Meat Loaf (feat. Marion Raven) – It’s All Coming Back To Me Now / 2006 Virgin / 2 Tracks / http://www.meatloaf.net / http://www.virginrecords.com / Reviewed 16 December 2006

[JMcQ]

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