She used my body just like a wound

I'll probably never know where she disappeared

But I can see her rising up out of the back seat now

Just like an angel rising up from a tomb}}

After the title line is repeated twelve times, with growing volume and intensity, the vocalist quietly repeats the first four lines of the above.

Music video

Michael Bay directed the music video for Propaganda Films.^[7] He had previously directed the videos for the album's prior two singles, "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)" and "Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through". Allen Daviau served as the cinematographer.

The music video has overlapping features so that it looks like that the actors are ghost-like, appearing and disappearing. The length of the music video is 7:42, compared to the 10:15 single version. Actors include Robert Patrick as Kenny's father, Greg Trock as Kenny, Will Estes as the grieving friend (young Meat Loaf), Joshua Diaz as the childhood iteration of Meat Loaf, and an unidentified model as "The Beauty on the Edge of Town".

Filming took place in and around Denton, Texas. Several parts were shot in Slidell, Texas on a large ranch.^[7] The scene with the "beauty at the edge of town" washing her car was filmed in Valley View, Texas, near to the Oklahoma border.^[8]

Plot

The video opens with Kenny playing with his friend (Josh Diaz), and the father (Robert Patrick) letting them sit in his airplane. A little older, Kenny takes the plane for a ride. The father runs outside just in time to see Kenny lose control of the aircraft, crash and killed ("They said he crashed and burned"). The firefighters extinguish the fire from the wreckage and an ambulance takes away the body.

In the second section of the song, the protagonist (Will Estes ^[9])sees the ghost of the plane fly over the graveyard at Kenny's funeral. Synchronic with the lyrics relating to "winter" ("freeze"; "no leaves on the trees") in this verse, some of the mise-en-scene is minimal. It shows his father as a family man during the day but an abusive alcoholic all the time. The line "He hit me again, and again, and again" is accompanied by a baseball scene, rather than visually depicting the violence of "hit" that the autobiographical elements suggest.^[2]

He runs away trying to regain his freedom ("I had to run away alone... my life became my own"). He then meets an older woman who teaches him everything "about the mystery and the muscle of love." A risqué sequence of them engaging in sexual activity in the back of a car matches the lyrics ("She used her body just like a bandage/She used my body just like a wound").

At the end of the video, whenever Meat Loaf sings the line "Objects in the Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are", he sees either the ghost of the plane, the woman or himself when he was younger. As with the lyrics, the sequence depicts how, as Allmusic says, "he still feels haunted by their memory."^[2]

Single release and reception

The song was the sixth track from Back into Hell released as a single. It reached number 38 on the US Billboard Hot 100, and number 26 on the UK Singles Chart and Canada's RPM Top Singles chart. On the latter chart, it stayed at that position for four weeks.^[10] In Australia, the single peaked at number 52 in June 1994.^[11][12] The UK Virgin release also featured two tracks performed live in New York City in July 1993: "All Revved Up with No Place to Go" and "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad."^[13] Other versions included live renditions of "Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through", "Masculine" and his cover of "Roll Over Beethoven". Like the album and other singles from Bat II, the artwork for the cover was by Michael Whelan. The graphic also appears alongside the song's lyrics in the album's booklet.^[14]

The length and narrative led Q magazine to call the song a "near-Springsteen parody ballad."^[15] It remains a major favorite with Meat Loaf’s fans thanks to its autobiographical quality.^[2] When Meat Loaf performed the song at the Royal Albert Hall in London in October 2006, one reviewer called the "little known but well loved song" a "showstopper."^[16]

The song was specified in some of the album's negative reviews, mainly its length and the repetition of the title line. Writing for Rolling Stone, Matt Birkbeck referred to the songs, naming "Objects", as "harmless, low-octane operatic drivel" with "insufferably long Steinman compositions with equally long names."^[17] The Fort Worth Star-Telegram also referred to the length of the songs on the album, in which Steinman "vomits up 75 minutes of endlessly repeated choruses."^[18]

Meat Loaf performed the song on the 14 April 1994 edition of the BBC television show Top of the Pops.^[19] Live versions of the song were included on the 1996 Live Around the World album and the 2007 3 Bats Live DVD. The Dream Engine performed the song at the Over the Top concerts at Mohegan Sun: this arrangement had the second verse being performed by a female vocalist. Steinman reused the melody, with new lyrics by Michael Kunze, for "Die Unstillbare Gier", a song performed by the character Graf von Krolock in the rock-opera Tanz der Vampire. Steve Barton performed the song on the 1998 Original Vienna Cast Recording.^[20] Steinman rewrote the Tanz version into English as "Confession of a Vampire" for the ill-fated US version (Dance of the Vampires) of the musical starring Michael Crawford.

Personnel

• Meat Loaf – lead vocals
• Bill Payne – piano
• Eddie Martinez – guitars
• Rick Marotta – drums
• Steve Buslowe – bass
• Jeff Bova – synthesizer, programming
• Todd Rundgren, Kasim Sulton, Max Haskett, Lorraine Crosby, Stuart Emerson – background vocals
• Ellen Foley, Rory Dodd – additional vocals

Charts

References

External links

• {{MetroLyrics song|meat-loaf|objects-in-the-rear-view-mirror-may-appear-closer-than-they-are}}