You Have Him to Thank for So Many Epic Songs

Hitmaker Jim Steinman dead at 73
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Apr 21, 2021 4:43 AM CDT
You Have Him to Thank for So Many Epic Songs
Inductee Jim Steinman speaks at the 2012 Songwriters Hall of Fame induction and awards gala in New York on June 14, 2012.   (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision, File)

Jim Steinman, the Grammy-winning composer who wrote Meat Loaf's best-selling Bat Out Of Hell album as well as hits for Celine Dion, Air Supply, and Bonnie Tyler, has died, his brother said. He was 73. Bill Steinman told the AP that his brother died Monday from kidney failure and had been ill for some time. He said Jim Steinman died in Connecticut near his home in Ridgefield. “I miss him a great deal already," Bill Steinman said by phone Tuesday. Jim Steinman was born on Nov. 1, 1947, in New York City. He got his start in musical theater and was known for writing and producing epic, operatic rock songs and power ballads throughout his prolific career. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2012 and won album of the year at the 1997 Grammy Awards for producing songs on Celine Dion's Falling Into You, which celebrated its 25th anniversary last month and featured the Steinman-penned power ballad “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now."

He wrote the music for Meat Loaf's classic 1977 debut album, which became one of the top-selling albums of all-time and reached 14-time platinum status by the RIAA. Steinman also wrote Meat Loaf's 1993 album, Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell, another commercial and multi-platinum success, and he worked on 2006's Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose, which closed the Bat Out of Hell trilogy. Steinman also composed the rock musical Bat Out of Hell: The Musical, which premiered in 2017 at the Manchester Opera House in Manchester, England, and worked with Meat Loaf on his most recent album, released in 2016. Steinman was responsible for Tyler's “Total Eclipse of the Heart," which topped the Billboard charts in 1983 and earned Tyler a Grammy nomination. When Tyler's song was No. 1, another Steinman production—Air Supply's “Making Love Out of Nothing at All"—peaked at No. 2, giving Steinman the Top 2 spots on the chart.

(More obituary stories.)

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