One reason Meat Loaf has received such lofty, and well-deserved praise over the years is because he, too, is fabulous to watch. He was born in Dallas, Texas and in 1967 formed a group called Meat Loaf Soul. But it was a role in a West Coast production of the musical Hair that served as his launching point. From there, he performed in an off-Broadway production of Rainbow, then landed a part in More Than You Deserve, a musical written by classically trained pianist Jim Steinman. Following a legendary appearance in the movie "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," Meat Loaf started working with Steinman on songs for a modern musical of Peter Pan, which eventually turned into 1977's Bat Out Of Hell.

The album made Meat Loaf a star. However, in the years that followed, he stopped working with Steinman and released several albums of his own, and with mixed results. Then, in 1993, he reunited with Steinman for Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell, which revisited and revised the bombast and melodrama that made the first Bat so popular. Meat Loaf returned two years later with Welcome To The Neighborhood and his in-concert retrospective Live Around The World followed a year after that. Then, in 2003, Meat Loaf released Couldn't Have Said It Better, which included four collaborations with Nikki Sixx.