Anything for Love—and the Man My Dad Might Have Been
June 08, 2025
Meat Loaf was more than nostalgia in our house. His music was theatre, heartbreak, and hope wrapped in one. And for my dad, 'Anything for Love' and 'Bat Out of Hell' weren’t just power ballads. They were confessions.
There was one artist my dad never seemed to grow tired of.
Meat Loaf.
Not just a voice—but a storm.
And when Anything for Love came on, it wasn’t just music.
It was something he needed to hear—over and over again.
He didn’t sing it.
But he played it like it had something left to say on his behalf.
💞 My Mum and Dad’s Anthem
Before the tension. Before the disconnect.
They went to see Meat Loaf together multiple times while they were dating.
And I like to imagine that moment—both of them swept up in it.
Two people who maybe believed that love could be loud and messy and powerful enough to carry them forward.
But music doesn’t always prepare us for what happens after the curtain falls.
🎭 “I’d Do Anything for Love” — The Ballad of Boundaries
“I would do anything for love… but I won’t do that.”
People joke about that lyric, but I think my dad understood it deeply.
It’s a song about almost losing yourself, and then drawing a shaky but necessary line.
He’d give everything—devotion, effort, presence—but maybe what he wouldn’t do was erase the last piece of himself that still remembered who he used to be.
It’s not just romantic. It’s survival.
🏍 “Bat Out of Hell” — The Fantasy of Escape
“Like a bat out of hell, I’ll be gone when the morning comes…”
This one felt different.
It wasn’t about love—it was about breaking free.
From responsibility. From confinement. From his own emotional weight.
The way the song explodes—it’s desperation, dressed as rebellion.
It’s youth trying to outrun time.
A man trying to outrun himself.
And maybe my dad needed that fantasy.
Of speed. Of recklessness. Of not caring.
Because the truth is, he cared too much.
And caring with nowhere to go can make a man want to put the key in the ignition and never look back.
🧠 What Tied These Songs Together?
Both songs are about being trapped.
And both are about trying not to disappear.
- One fights for love without erasure.
- The other dreams of escape at full throttle.
And maybe that’s who my dad was:
A man caught between longing to be loved and desperate to feel free.
✍️ The Legacy That Lingers in Me
These weren’t just songs he liked.
They were part of his emotional DNA.
And now they’re part of mine.
When I hear them, I don’t just hear Meat Loaf—I hear my dad’s inner life, the one he never quite handed over in words.
I don’t want to escape my life.
I want to inhabit it.
Fully. Freely.
Without trading away the parts of me that feel inconvenient to others.
That’s what he never quite learned.
And what I’m still learning—one memory, one melody at a time.
🎥 Watch the Full Song — I’d Do Anything for Love
Maybe he didn’t know how to say all of that.
But maybe he didn’t need to.
He had Meat Loaf.
And now—I have the words.