Month: November 2021

Holy what! Rob Harvilla’s latest episode of “60 Songs That Explain the ’90s” (fantastic podcast, if you grew up in the 90s you should give it a listen, hits all the right feels) also explains some of my boys’ (ages 7 and 4) top requested hits on WDAD (playing all the greatest hits for listeners from the Tuscon to the Elantra):

Jim Steinman.

Steinman, who passed away in April, is responsible for writing a slew of incredible songs that you’ve most definitely heard and loved and that Ana and I have shard with the boys through the years.

In fact, DJRob’s list of Jim Steinman’s greatest tunes rounds out with a top 3 that the Kenney Boys would agree with:

Heck, they’ve eveng gotten into Celine Dion’s “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now” which, not that it’s been pointed out to me, absolutely sounds like a Steinman song.

Meat Loaf remembered Jim Steinman earlier this year in an interview with Rolling Stone where he summed up the power of Steinman’s work nicely:

But what Barbra Streisand [who sang Steinman’s “Left In The Dark”] and Barry Manilow [who sang “Read ’em and Weep”] didn’t understand is that you can’t just have a great voice and sing a Jim Steinman song. You have to become a Jim Steinman song. You have to be the song. You don’t sing the song. You are the song.

The whole piece is worth a read, even with a gut wrenching opening.

The boys may not get it, what the songs are about or what it means to “be the song” but they feel something when listening to Steinman’s songs and it drowns out all the other noise and pop and nursery rhymes. Maybe the emotion, even if they don’t fully get it, is so real you can’t help but feel it.

Or maybe they just get a kick out of being allowed to be loud in the back of the car because mom and dad are shout-singing along too.