27 Comments on “Your Sunday Cheese”

1. The piano at the beginning is the key here.

2. I hated this song even as a youngster. Ugh. lol.

3. Oh, those high notes!

   I too often am reminded of this song; there’s a well-known filk of it called “Making Love Weighing Nothing At All” about, well, yeah. And, as is often the case when filking songs of less-than-classic proportions, the lyrics are greatly improved in the rewrite. (The rewrite was done by a great parodist, Bob Kanefsky, so I guess the improvement is no surprise.)

4. First off, BIG fan of the well aged cheese that is Jim Steinman. Do YOU have a copy of Pandora’s Box, the girl group he attempted in the ’90’s?? Yes, I do.

   Now a fun thing to do when Air Supply’s song was out was to take that, Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart, Barry Manilow’s Read ’em and Weep, and then maybe something from Jim’s Bad for Good and play them back to back. On the radio. To the anguished cries of my listening audience(former DJ in my youth). Just to see if they could spot the producer.

   You can do that with David Foster, too!! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!

5. You are a MADMAN.

6. And in a related follow up: Remember that no matter how cheesy the lyrics, the Band backing Jim on most of his work, including Bat Out of Hell has a very E Street pedigree, with Roy Bittan and Max Weinberg playing on A LOT of his productions.

7. Oh, there’s no doubt there’s a lot of craft in that cheese.

8. John,

   Why do you hate us so?

9. But, but, but…The video makes that song! The 80s fashion. The bad acting. That thing where they make a photograph turn into a flashback. A private plane! Groupies! (Who knew Air Supply had female groupies who weren’t in their 40s?)

   Oh man. You don’t know what you’re missing out on.

10. If Bruce Springsteen is the Pope of my rock world, Jim Steinman is definitely in the college of cardinals. I have a blatant and unapologetic love for everything that man has done, even the crappier songs on Bad for Good, which Meat Loaf wisely held off of Bat out of Hell III.

    Thanks, Mr. Scalzi. You just made my Sunday.

11. I am really appreciative that you don’t have these things set to autoplay. Thank you, Mr. Scalzi.

12. My husband LOVES Jin Steinman beyond all reason.

    I, on the other hand, am firmly convinced that he’s always wearing gloves because he’s hiding his lobster claws. That man is not of this earth.

13. For years I’ve had this note in my file of stories to write someday: “Steinmanesque urban fantasy”. If anyone else wants to play with it, too, go ahead; there’s bound to be room for more than one in there.

14. Not only is it cheesey it’s old cheese so it’s also very stinky. But I too have my songs that I love that are super cheese. So more power to the cheesey .

15. Rishathra @3 made me do a lol wiv my face, and also reminded me to publish my own version of “Daisy Daisy”.

    Here’s an excerpt:

    “‘Cause you’d look sweet filled with my meat in a pressure-suit made for two!”

    So thanks, Rishathra. Thank you muchly for reminding me of my strength

16. Most of the 80’s songs that you drop off on us I can handle, quite a few I like, but I’m not even going to push play this time. The utter putrescence of what is Air Supply would cause me palpable audio based pain.
    I don’t know what it is exactly, but these guys make me physically ill

    Thank you for not including the video. I’d rather run afoul of the Spanish Inquisition…

17. By the same token, has anyone compared the Gary Jules version of Mad World to the Tears for Fears original? The remake is something to blub into your alcopop then self-asphyxiate alone in a shower too – the original is just “Yes, the world is crazy, my childhood stank but what the hell let’s bounce along anyway”.

    Me, I’m for bouncing along. If anything’s going to be emo around here, it’ll be my lawn.

    *points the mic at the audience so they can all shout “That way it would cut itself!”*

18. Despite being an 80s fan (generally) I’ve learned a few things from this post. Specifically, before pressing the large, friendly-looking play-button:

    1. Read *all* the comments – they contain some really important and relevant information.
    2. Turn the volume down… way down.
    3. Don’t attempt to enjoy a cup of nice, hot tea while being introduced to the works of Jim Steinman. I may accidentally have blown a snot-bubble with tea droplets, but on account of the fact that I was drinking green tea, the postmortem was inconclusive. On an up-note, I always keep LCD screen cleaner in the house.
    4. I’m pretty sure I won’t rush out and buy any albums featuring Jim Steinman.

    Cheesy indeed!

19. Mr. Scalzi has too man fans hanging around and must occasionally drive some off with a stick, in this case preprocessed mozzerella.

20. Fine. Somebody’s gotta do it.

    I’m just going to stand up on the big old Internet and say “Oh, hey, I remember that song! I kinda liked it! Still do, apparently! Listened to the whole thing and my ears didn’t even bleed a little bit!”

    Hrmph.

21. Must. Find. Video. Can’t. Stop. Self.

22. I love Jim. I dunno know but I turned this up. Loud. And sang along. Sad really. I must go now and listen to… Nick Cave. That’ll fix it.

23. I thought this was going to be a post about, you know, brie. Or cheddar. Or St. Andres. Or something. Possibly to go with bacon.

    Dear God, man. The humanity! Oh, the humanity!

24. John:

    I have known Mike for years. He was a gifted DJ. He also has the second most warped mind for playlist torture I have ever know.

    The worst? I have both the LP that Tee Set made (every song sounds like My Belle Amie. It’s worse than the time Garrison Keillor had the PHC band do Opera, Top-40, and the National Antham in the style of Foggy Mountain Breakdown, and without the humor of Pompous Circumstances by Wendy Carlos–still my favorite song banned in the U.K.) AND both the records that Hannah/Barbara and Kellogs released of The Banana Splits. “It’s Such a Good Day” sucks to such a degree that it can actually pull Glial cells out of your ears. In a sad note, you would not believe what frantic H/B fans have offered me for those two little records at ComicCon.

25. Jim Steinman, who wrote the ONLY Celine Dion song, I would intentionally listen to, has such a distictive sound that I am disturbed that in 20+ years I had never realised that he wrote this song.
    Thank you Mr Scalzi. :)

26. Well if nothing else, the Air Supply should clear out the LJ folks.

    I’m all for big grandiose rock but Steinman pushes the envelope. Hell, he shreds the envelope to bits. Stravinsky would listen to this and think “you might want to back off the orchestration a bit.” But I am not one to talk because there’s vinyl AND a CD copy of Bat Out of Hell here. And possibly on the PC as well…

27. What is so bad about Air Supply?