At this point we get a scene to set up our third and final couple for this play. Jagwire rides into Falco Square and finds Zahara entering. He tries to talk Zahara into spending the night with him and it’s pretty clear they have a history. Then she breaks into the song.

The song is performed as something of a duet between the ex-lovers (Zahara played by Danielle Steers and Jagwire by Dom Hartley-Harris), though Zahara definitely takes the majority of it (including all of the chorus). The only lyrical changes are gender swaps. There are no cuts or extra repeats. It’s a pretty straightforward performance of the original song.

It opens with a music box-like keyboard introduction that turns into piano and soft drumming as Steers’s vocal begins. One thing that’s notably different is that the entire song is just a bit faster than the original Meat Loaf recording. The horns replace what strings did in the chorus of the original recording, but they don’t do anything different–they play the same thing note-for-note that the strings did the first time.

Dom Hartley-Harris then takes the lead for a few lines before Steers returns for the chorus. They both sing well, with a bit of a raspy edge to their voices that helps give it a bit of a rock edge.

There isn’t much to say about this song, because it is such a straightforward cover. Story-wise, it establishes our third couple in Jagwire and Zahara, a former couple where one member (Jagwire) wants to get back together while the other does not. It’s definitely the least developed of the three relationships, and I kind of suspect it only exists to give a reason for this song appearing. The next scene cuts abruptly back to Falco Tower.

Ranking the Versions

1. Meat Loaf-Bat out of Hell (Original)
2. Danielle Steers
   • Yes, it’s the same singer from this version, but it’s a very different arrangement. It’s a simple acoustic guitar rendition of the song but she can definitely sing and it’s pretty enough. It’s at the same tempo as the original recording instead of the tempo of this one and that lets the melody stand out. It’s really good and has some originality.
3. Jim Steinman’s Bat out of Hell: The Musical
4. Bonnie Tyler-Free Spirit
   • It’s a dance version. Yuck.
5. Todd Rundgren-(Re)Production
   • I have an immense amount of respect for Todd Rundgren. I think he’s at the level of musicianship of Prince but never got the attention because he’s so much more musically restless. If you were a Prince fan, you always knew that funky pop-rock sound was reasonably likely to show up at least in some form on any new release, but Rundgren has no such bread-and-butter and goes every direction imaginable, so even though he had some enormous hits in the early ’70s he never really got a following. But wow this is terrible. It’s thin and the recording sounds very cheap. He still sounds fine on the vocals but that’s really the only thing decent about this recording.
6. Olivia Newton-John-A Few Best Men Original Soundtrack
   • Everything about this is bad. Even Newton-John’s voice is awful. (She was 63, so there’s really no shame in sounding bad, but she really does.) Again it sounds cheaply recorded. There’s just no reason to listen to this one.