The Jim Steinman Lyric That Was Written for Meat Loaf and Indirectly Assisted by Elvis

It’s a wonder that Jim Steinman’s songs for Meat Loaf were able to break through to a larger audience. They often broke the rules of what pop music was supposed to be in terms of their structures and lyrical techniques.

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One of the pair’s biggest hits together, “Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad”, actually began as a half-hearted attempt by Steinman to simplify matters. Thankfully, it veered away from that. And it followed his wild, dramatic tendencies to the musical promised land.

“Bad” Tidings

Has there ever been an album that turned out so successful that was first so roundly rejected as Bat Out Of Hell? Singer Meat Loaf and composer Jim Steinman were both launching their pop music careers after starts in musical theatre. They believed in the material. So did producer Todd Rundgren.

Record labels? Not so much. Why? Well, Steinman simply refused to adhere to traditional pop songwriting tropes when composing his material. At one point, a close friend challenged him on this tendency. To illustrate her point, she pointed to an Elvis Presley song that was playing on the radio as the kind of straightforward song Steinman should try writing.

The name of that song was “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You”. If that sounds so familiar, it’s because that phrase, somewhat modified, figures heavily into the refrains of “Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad”. The last song written for the album would turn into its breakaway hit.

Of course, even then, it had to be edited. About 40 seconds of the album version of the track would be lopped off for the radio, and then another 40 seconds after that for the 7-inch single. Nonetheless, “Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad” showed that there was a large audience willing to groove to Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf’s particular brand of musical excess.

Examining the Lyrics of “Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad”

“Two Out Of Three Ain’t Mad” steers clear of the gothic elements attached to the rest of Bat Out Of Hell. It also sticks to mostly earnest territory, unlike some of the tongue-in-cheek moments elsewhere on the record. It’s a song, at its basic level, about how rare it is for someone to end up with a partner who’s their first choice.

The narrator is speaking to his new girlfriend, who sees in him the answer to all her romantic prayers. But he’s trying to temper her expectations. “And maybe you can cry all night,” he explains. “But that’ll never change the way I feel.” She’s so sad that she wants to throw him out of their bed, which he resists because of the bad weather outside.

“I’m crying icicles instead of tears,” he moans about her cold reaction to his admission. But he nonetheless lays it on the line. “I want you, I need you,” he explains. “But there ain’t no way I’m ever gonna love you/Now don’t be sad/’Cause two out of three ain’t bad.” His punch line, meant to lighten the mood, probably makes things worse.

The middle eight cautions her not to chase futile hopes. “But there ain’t no Coup de Ville,” he warns. “Hiding at the bottom of a Cracker Jack box.” In the final verse, he reveals that he, too, knows her pain, because the girl that he loved the most couldn’t reciprocate his feelings.

In that way, “Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad” hints that there’s an endless chain of heartbreak stretching across the world, one wounded lover after another failing to fulfill the dreams of the next person down the line. That’s not the kind of thing that the average pop song can pull off. And that’s why we should be thankful that Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman never followed those unwritten rules.

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