The title of “Pray Lewd” is a pun that reveals what it really is: a prelude of the album. So, why is it at track 13? I don’t know.

Steve Margoshes appears as the solo piano player here. It opens with a version of “Original Sin” played at breakneck speed. Then he plays “It’s All Coming back to Me Now” at essentially normal speed but slowly speeds up as he repeats until it is back to the same hyperspeed “Original Sin” had. Then he returns to “Original Sin” and slows down to a crawl as it slowly fades out.

There isn’t a lot to it, but it’s a really nice song. I have always wondered about it, because it isn’t really much of an album prelude. It’s really just the two songs. They do both work in this setting, so maybe it’s as simple as they sounded good this way and worked together, but the title makes it surprising.

After listening to the A Small Circle of Friends score, which is heavily centered around variations on “Making Love out of Nothing at All” and “Total Eclipse of the Heart” at different speeds, I wonder a bit if this is actually how Steinman wrote the songs to begin with. Did he essentially compose a suite like A Small Circle of Friends and then cut out the pieces that eventually became “Original Sin” and “It’s All Coming back to Me Now?” I don’t know if anyone knows the answer to that, but my naïve viewpoint has always wondered if Steinman’s songs largely began like this–as essentially classical pieces with movements that he breaks out into songs.

It’s a lovely bit of solo piano that really emphasizes the strengths of those two melodies.