Meat Loaf's Hang Cool Teddy Bear

Author

By Andrew Hamlin

Publish Date

Dec. 22, 2010

Top ten reasons why Meat Loaf made the best album of 2010 bar none with his latest (last?) (and, yeah, I'm squinting at you Kanye West):
• Meat sings "I put my pants on" and
• "I can barely barely fit my dick in my pants" (the Myth of Sisyphus?).
• He makes you believe he was once a despondent hitchhiker who "had to listen to some trucker/tell me all about the meaning of life" but
• he saw "Elvis in Vegas" — the transformative vision with the hubris to serve his own Loafness next to the King (who wouldn't taste nearly as good by now anyway)
• (although Meat's rudeness cuts Presley's politeness when it comes to "The Promised Land" — consult Midnight at the Lost And Found (1983)).
• The tunes represent the reflections and fantasies of a soldier fighting and maybe dying on a battlefield a long way from home (contrast Kanye's incessant if groovin' inner views) — An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge for the sentenced-to-Iraq generation.
• Each and every song here makes you want to drive a car too fast and/or play air instruments ferociously, but
• each reminds you of life within the setting of death and desolation — the fighter's possible futures — except for
• the opening cut, where our man declares, "I don't want/peace on earth/I just want to go home..."
• ...and that's the truth that any firefight/bomb-squad veteran keeps pasted with guilt to his/her heart.