Beyond the limits of taste — over the top of it, you might say — lies true ecstasy.
That was the wisdom embedded in the loud, lusty, gloriously sweaty music of Meat Loaf, who spent half a century watching other rock stars peer over the cliff of vulgarity as he happily leaped into the void time after time.
In songs like “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” and “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That),” the singer, who died Thursday at age 74, pushed his voice too hard in lyrics that were too corny over arrangements that did way too much (and went on way too long). His destination was excess, the fuel his utter shamelessness. But Meat Loaf understood that only by going too far could music seek to embody an experience like sex — the paradise promised inside that car parked by the lake — instead of merely describing it.
