After Steinman had seemingly resurrected the career of one of his past collaborators in Meat Loaf, he ended up putting out two covers with his other common collaborator of the past who had since disappeared from the charts in Bonnie Tyler.

It’s actually remarkable how well Tyler and Meat Loaf parallel one another after working with Steinman. After the big hit album, each put out a massively disappointing follow-up before parting ways with Steinman. Each then fairly precipitously dropped out of sight in his/her homeland to the point that their albums were not even released there (Tyler’s were also not getting released in the US, though Meat Loaf continued to be successful in the UK pretty much throughout the ’80s.) while they continued to enjoy some success in mainland Europe. Long after that initial success (16 years for Meat Loaf; 13 years for Tyler), they each finally returned to working with Steinman.

But alas, where Meat Loaf went to work with Steinman on a deliberate sequel to Bat out of Hell that would go on to enormous success, Tyler covered a couple of Steinman songs with him producing and her comeback stalled at the gate. In 1996, Tyler had signed with a new record company and was releasing Free Spirit worldwide–her albums had not been released in the US or UK in the 1990s. To me, it’s a remarkably ’80s-sounding album for 1996, peppered as it is with ’80s (or earlier) names like Klaus Mein, Rudolf Shenker, Jeff Lynne, David Foster, and Paul Simon as writers, producers, or both, and most of it is not very memorable.

However, Steinman co-produced (with Steven Rinkoff, who would essentially be inseperable from Steinman from this point onward) two covers of his earlier work in “Making Love (Out of Nothing at All)” and “Two out of Three Ain’t Bad.”

Back when I covered the Air Supply recording of this song, I wondered aloud why Steinman hadn’t given the song to Tyler in the first place. The fact that she then recorded it so long after, with Steinman in the studio, only makes me wonder more if it was spreading out his bets as I speculated. Whatever the reason then, Tyler did finally get there in 1996 for what it seems most Steinman fans consider the definitive version of the song.

Perhaps the smallest change to this song is changing one stanza of the lyrics. Where the original says, “I can make the runner stumble/Or I can make the final block/I can make every tackle at the sound of a whistle/I can make all the stadiums rock,” this version instead says, “I can make you find your power/I can make you lose your fear/I can make your body do some magical things/I can make your inhibitions all disappear.” The football metaphor has always struck me as out of left field (and very out of place for Air Supply), but I also don’t like just how generic the replacement lyrics are here. I think the difference is pretty small but I prefer the original.

Probably the most obvious change is the opening, which mixes a haunting operatic vocal line from Tyler’s mother, Elaine Hopkins, with atmospheric storm sounds, a church bell sound, and something that sounds like a distorted sound of children chanting. It creates a vaguely eerie, Gothic atmosphere that reminds me more of Wuthering Heights than anything in any version of “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” ever has.

The familiar piano refrain then leads us into the song and as the first verse carries on everything else falls away to leave us with just Tyler’s voice, piano, and some soft Jeff Bova keyboard backgrounds. When we get to the chorus, they are joined with a very dance-like rhythm line, a return of Hopkins’s opera vocal, and some backing vocals from Eric Troyer, Kasim Sulton, and Glen Burtnick. It all sounds great except for that weird dance beat. The bridge at the center of the song no longer has a guitar solo but instead just continues as it was but with just the background opera vocals. In the final chorus, Eddie Martinez joins in with some acoustic guitar but most of the big build is really just layers of Tyler’s voice.

As much as I have disliked Tyler’s voice in general, there is some way that the hoarseness actually works really well with this song. I don’t know if it’s because of the ethereal opera vocals as counterpoint or just because I love the song so much, but I think this is the best Bonnie Tyler has ever sounded.

With how much I love Air Supply’s recording, it’s a tall order to expect any other version to surpass it, and for me this one doesn’t really make it. I like the atmosphere of the opening and I feel like it does a better version of what every “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” has done with setting a Wuthering Heights-like tone. I really like the haunting opera vocal throughout. But I so detest that dance rhythm that feels like it was beamed in from the moon, and as conventional as the strummed guitars and leads from the original are, I still missed them when they weren’t there. For me, Bonnie Tyler’s version of “Making Love (Out of Nothing at All)” is a worthy successor to the original, but doesn’t replace it.