Jim Steinman’s last real moment of commercial relevance during his lifetime happened when Celine Dion covered the ballad that had been intended as the lead single from Original Sin and brought it to a mainstream audience. I have rather dreaded the moment of getting to this recording, because I have always had a difficult time hearing this version. It’s extremely close to the original and every tiny difference is a downgrade, so there’s just zero reason to listen to it. And Celine Dion would record the worst song in history a year later, so I don’t exactly have a high opinion of her. Part of me always wonders if it’s really just my antipathy to Dion that makes me dislike this version, but I do think there are legitimate differences.

Some sources claim that Dion’s vocal is recorded over the same musical track as the Pandora’s Box recording, but I feel pretty certain that is not true. It would not surprise me if some of the tracks are the same, but there are reasons to think it’s different even beyond listening. First, where Original Sin says that was recorded at The Power Station, the liner notes to Falling into You say that this song was recorded at The Hit Factory. That note could just be about the vocal but it seems to me like it would be misleading at best if that were the intended meaning. Further, while Roy Bittan (Grand Piano), Jeff Bova (Keyboards, Programming), Jimmy Bralower (Drums, Percussion), Steve Buslowe (Bass), Todd Rundgren (Backing Vocals, Backing Vocal Arrangement), Eric Troyer (Backing vocals), and Rory Dodd (Backing Vocals) are at least arguably credited the same way (Dodd, Troyer, and Rundgren have a credit on the Original Sin album for backing vocals even though they do not have a specific one on “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now”), other credits are not shared. Jim Steinman was credited for keyboards on the original but is not in this version. Tim Pierce did not appear on the original but is now credited with guitars, the same credit Eddie Martinez had in the original. Eddie Martinez meanwhile is credited with “additional guitar” in this version. And Kenny Aaronoff (Additional Drums), Bashiri Johnson (Additional Percussion), Glen Burtnick (Backing Vocals), Kasim Sulton (Backing Vocals), and Steven Rinkoff (Co-produced and Recorded By) all get credits here where they did not on the original. In short (Too late, I know), I do not doubt that parts of the original recording survive in this one, but I think that there is more re-recording than “over the same musical track” makes it sound.

The opening of the song is the same atmospheric weather effects and piano as the original but with some added high-pitched guitar squeals, which is ironic since the relative lack of guitar is part of my problem with this cover. The Eddie Martinez guitar solo from the original is gone, replaced by an instrumental section that does include some electric guitars low in the mix but really doesn’t have a lead instrument at all. There is a lot of loud, vaguely string-like synthesizer throughout much of the song and the backing vocals are far more prevalent. Many of the lead guitar fills from the last half of the song are gone, though there are also some additional parts added in their place.

While the excision of the guitar solo may be the only immediately apparent of these changes, I do think that they have a noticeable cumulative effect in that they soften the song, generally replacing guitars with synthesizers. They also result in (surprisingly, given the artist) the vocal standing out less in the mix and a bit less of a dynamic sound than the Pandora’s Box version.

Of course, what most consider to be the big difference between the two is the vocal. I have a hot take: I think Elaine Caswell does it better. Dion hits all of the notes well and doesn’t do anything really wrong, but neither does Caswell. Caswell just sounds to me like she means it so much more than Dion does and I cannot even explain why. There is every possibility that this is just my bias talking, but if it is, I am unable to overcome it in this case.

The differences between Celine Dion’s and Pandora’s Box’s recordings of “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” are not huge but noticeable. And it’s partly because the differences aren’t enormous that I absolutely never listen to this one. I like the Pandora’s Box recording more than Meat Loaf’s (which we will get to later), but Meat Loaf’s is also very different, so I do still like to listen to it. But this rendition just seems to me like it’s too close ever to think it’s worth hearing as a change-up and it’s definitely the lesser of the two, and so I just always listen to the Pandora’s Box version.

Notes

• Caswell would appear on Dion’s Falling into You album elsewhere, on the Steinman/Rinkoff produced “River Deep–Mountain High.” Caswell tells her story about meeting Dion here.
• I would actually really love to hear someone like the Charismatic Voice do an analysis of what’s different between this vocal and the original, even if it’s without trying to rate one as better or worse than the other.
• This song essentially marks the end of Jim Steinman’s career as a commercially successful songwriter in the US. It reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100, and that’s really underselling it. Billboard also ranked it number 66 for the decade (according to their most recent methodology, which I’m guessing would also have given Steinman a third number one hit if it had been in place by 1996). It kind of was “Total Eclipse of the Heart” redux, though Caswell, Ellen Foley, and Gina Taylor did not get to reap the rewards thereof. Unless I missed something (possible), no Steinman song would chart again in the US in his lifetime.
• At this point, Steinman turns his focus more toward musicals, culminating in Jim Steinman’s Bat out of Hell: The Musical in 2017, but there are still things to talk about. I believe I have posted about 66 Steinman songs now (counting covers). And somehow I’m not sick of it yet.