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Movie and Music Analysis from One Lacking Any Credentials to Provide It


Jim Steinman’s Bat out of Hell–The Musical: “Dead Ringer for Love”

Falco finishes “What Part of My Body Hurts the Most” only to turn around and discover Tink has arrived. Tink makes an offer: promise no one gets hurt and you’ll leave the rest of us alone, and I’ll take you to Raven so you can bring her home. Falco agrees while celebrating Tink’s betrayal of Strat.

We cut to a bar in the Deep End where the Lost are celebrating the life of Strat and the his union with Raven. While this song serves as their celebration, its most important plot point is that it depicts Jagwire (played by Dom Hartley-Harris) and Zahara (played by Danielle Steers) getting back together, as they sing the lead parts of this song.

Once again, there isn’t much to differentiate this song from the original. Even the horns actually match. As far as the structure and arrangement, I think the only real difference is that the lead guitars are a bit quieter, and that’s still not a very big difference.

Dom Hartley-Harris is rather up and down in this show, but this is one of his best points, imbuing his voice with a level of rasp that he doesn’t have elsewhere that absolutely befits the rock-out nature of this song. He sounds great throughout and is only at all hurt by the fact that Danielle Steers is just great. She does the same thing he does but is even better, and she has a power to her voice that he just can’t quite match.

There are a few songs in the show that are noticeably faster than the album recordings, and I rather wish this were one of them. The chorus has a real energy anyway, but if it were running through at breakneck pace, I suspect that it would be just fantastic.

The vocals are better in this version than the original, but the Dead Ringer version’s louder guitars are a definite point in its favor. To me, these two are basically a coin flip.


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