Showing that he’s not shying away from Steinman songs that people might already know, the fourth track on Braver than We Are finds the ragged-voiced “hero” taking on an originally Steinman-produced track from Bonnie Tyler’s Sacred Dreams and Forbidden Fire album. The title has a very small alteration, but the arrangement is in fact quite different than the Tyler/Rundgren original.

Back when I reviewed the original recording, I saw it as being less than the sum of its parts, and I suspect that part of the reason is how time-bound the production sounds. It could not have been released more than three years either direction of when it was without sounding like it was beamed in from space. So, one would think that Meat Loaf’s version here is sort of taking the ’80s out of the song. But, weirdly, I feel like this version comes out sounding even more like the ’80s.

The structure of the song is untouched and the lyrical changes are so small as to be insignificant, but a lot of the dynamics of the original song, from the cool, soft opening to the booming guitar solo to the shouting bridge to the slow fade out are replaced be a relatively bland sameness. The melody is strong and intact, so it can carry a lot. The lyrics are still great. But there is a weird synthesizer hook added that Meat Loaf really relies on as though it needs the help, going back to it consistently throughout the song. And Eddie Martinez’s guitar solo is completely gone.

Similarly, the vocals have gone through a homogenization. Where Tyler and Rundgren have a type of vocal charisma in their changes and dynamics throughout the original, whether it’s Rundgren’s high-pitched wailing going into the solo or Tyler’s vicious delivery of “There were times when we fought like tigers,” Meat Loaf and Stacy Michelle really just sound like they’re just trying to sing the song from sheet music. There is a distinct lack of emotion, especially from Meat Loaf, that this song just isn’t strong enough to overcome. Meat Loaf also still sounds out of breath through parts of the song, though he sounds better here than in the last couple of songs. Michelle sounds fine but unspectacular.

The ’80s drum machine track is gone, but otherwise this is a more synth-heavy, less guitar-forward rendition of the song that lacks the vocal emotion that carried the original version. In his attempt to “modernize” the song, Meat Loaf seems to have turned it into the soulless ’80s synth-fest a critic could accuse the original of being. It honestly makes me appreciate the original recording more to hear what it became here.