"It's All Coming Back to Me Now" is a power ballad, written
by Jim Steinman. According to Steinman the song was inspired by Wuthering Heights, and was an attempt to write "the most passionate, romantic song" he could ever create. Meat Loaf
has said the song was intended for Bat out of Hell II and given to the singer in 1986, but that they both decided to use "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)" for Bat II, and save this song for Bat III.
The song has had three major releases, all roughly belonging to the soft rock genre. The first version appeared on the concept album Original Sin, recorded by Pandora's Box. It was then
recorded by Celine Dion for her album Falling into You, and her version was a commercial hit, reaching No. 2 in the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and No. 3 in the UK
Singles Chart. Meat Loaf recorded it as a duet with Norwegian singer Marion Raven for Bat III and released it as a single in 2006.
A music video was produced for each of the three versions; death is a recurring theme in
all of these videos, fitting in with the suggestion in Virgin's press release for Original Sin that "in Steinman's songs, the dead come to life and the living are doomed to die." This is
particularly evident when the dead characters seem to be resurrected in the memories of the main vocalist. Although in the case of Celine come back you to video, the theme is less about the living being doomed and more about a lost love.
Influenced by Emily Brontė's novel Wuthering Heights, Steinman compared the song to 'Heathcliff digging up Cathy's corpse and dancing with it in the cold moonlight'. In the Jim
Steinman Opens Pandora's Box promotional video, he posits that the novel:
is always made much too polite; it always has been in movies. This isn't the Wuthering
Heights of Kate Bush -- that little fanciful Wuthering Heights. The scene they always cut out is the scene when Heathcliff digs up Catherine's body and dances in the moonlight
and on the beach with it. I think you can't get much more operatic or passionate than that. I was trying to write a song about dead things coming to life. I was trying to write a song
about being enslaved and obsessed by love, not just enchanted and happy with it. It was about the dark side of love; about the ability to be resurrected by it... I just tried to put everything I could into it, and I'm real proud of it.
In another interview, Steinman expands on his comments about the song being about the 'dark side of love'.
It's about obsession, and that can be scary because you're not in control and you don't
know where it's going to stop. It says that, at any point in somebody's life, when they loved somebody strongly enough and that person returns, a certain touch, a certain
physical gesture can turn them from being defiant and disgusted with this person to being subservient again. And it's not just a pleasurable feeling that comes back, it's the complete
terror and loss of control that comes back. And I think that's ultimately a great weapon.
The website Allmusic called the song 'a tormented ballad about romantic loss and regret
built on a spooky yet heart-wrenching piano melody'.The torment is present in the song's opening ('There were nights when the wind was so cold'), from which the singer recovers
('I finished crying in the instant that you left... And I banished every memory you and I had ever made'). However, the defiance in the verses are replaced by the return of the
'subservient' feelings in the chorus ('when you touch me like this, and you hold me like that...'); this juxtaposition continues throughout the song.
'There were those empty threats and hollow lies
'And whenever you tried to hurt me
'I just hurt you even worse and so much deeper.'
Eroticism is implied in the lines 'There were nights of endless pleasure' and 'The flesh and
the fantasies: all coming back to me'. The song ends with a passionate, quiet reprise of the chorus. Critics have also identified Wagner, of whom Steinman is an admirer, as an
inspiration. Specifying this song, the Sunday Times said "the theme of Wagner's opera Tristan and Isolde, with its extreme passions and obsessive love, informs all his best work."
A 2007 article in the Toronto Star claims that the song was written as Steinman's "tryout" as lyricist for Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard.
It's All Coming Back to Me Now
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