Making Love Out Of Nothing At All (Air Supply) - day 12
This is where I know you’ll run away and stop reading, but I must insist you to indulge me, for the sake of rock god Jim Steinman, who wrote this song for Air Supply around the same time as he wrote Total Eclipse Of The Heart for Bonnie Tyler. In my past countdowns I have written about the beauty that is Air Supply, describing their music as schmaltzy and basic. But I challenge you to find me another pop culture Irish tenor who can sing like Russell Hitchcock. What man can hit these notes, that may possibly be written for the soprano voice of a female, and hit those notes magically?
Let’s talk about Jim Steinman for a minute. This is the genius who was not just responsible for these career-changing songs for the respective artists, but who also created the monstrosity that was Meatloaf and the mega-hit for Celine Dion, It’s All Coming Back To Me Now. See? It really is! You’re getting it! As a celebration of this genius who just died not that long ago, I celebrate one of his masterpieces that changed the sound of Air Supply from AM Radio fodder to one of 1983’s most confusing pop hits, Making Love Out Of Nothing At All. Even the song title was confusing. To me, anyway.
I remember where I was the first time I got punched in the face with this song: on campus at University of Scranton. Your favorite little closet gaytard, searching for the answers to life with testosterone making it hard to focus and prayer making waking life confusing and unpredictable. And all I wanted was to know this feeling for myself, to love someone so much that these lyrics would mean something to me:
Every time I see you all the rays of the sun are streaming through the waves in your hair
And every star in the sky is taking aim at your eyes like a spotlight
The beating of my heart is a drum and it’s lost and it’s looking for a rhythm like you
You can take the darkness from the pit of the night and turn it to a beacon burning endlessly bright…
I think what may have initially attracted me to this song was its similarity in scope to Total Eclipse which, at the same time of my life, reigned supreme on my mental playlist. But what kept me locked in tune to this song was that voice so powerfully singing these words.
