Prime Cuts

This album might as well be called "The Best of Meat Loaf, 1984-1987," since it surveys his stint at Arista Records, including material from his studio albums Bad Attitude and Blind Before I Stop, and the concert collection known as Live at Wembley in the U.K. and simply as Live elsewhere. It features his two British Top 40 hits of the period, "Modern Girl" and "Rock 'N' Roll Mercenaries," but eschews the minor hits "Nowhere Fast" and "Piece of the Action" in favor of including live remakes of earlier Meat Loaf hits "Two out of Three Ain't Bad" and "Bat out of Hell," along with some non-chart singles, "Surf's Up," "Getting Away with Murder," "Blind Before I Stop," and another live remake, "Paradise by the Dashboard Light." This is not the strongest possible selection from a limited catalog, but it does give a good sense of Meat Loaf's work in the mid-'80s, when he was struggling with the legacy of his Bat out of Hell period at a time when he had to substitute some fairly ordinary hard rock songs for the ambitious compositions of Jim Steinman. ~ William Ruhlmann|