What Big Idea Is Burning Inside of You?

The first time I heard Paradise by the Dashboard Light, I literally pulled over my car and said out loud, "What the hell was that?" The song broke every convention of popular music.

It was long. The single was almost eight minutes, and the song was even divided into three acts, like a play. There was an emotional arc to the story, which covers an entire relationship from intense longing to unbearable hatred.

It had a baseball announcer, Phil Rizzuto from the New York Yankees, calling the play-by-play as a young boy tries to "go all the way" with his girlfriend. That was pretty outrageous stuff for 1977 daytime radio, so the song uses baseball ("stealing home") as an analogy for sex.

It was sung by a singer named Meat Loaf, who looked like an overinflated football lineman wearing his sister's wig.

Wikipedia tells me that the single was a modest success, never getting higher than 39 on the Billboard Hot 100. But it brought attention to the album Bat Out of Hell, whose sales now total over 43 million worldwide.

Weekend suggestions

Look, it's your weekend, you can do what you want. But here are two choices you might consider:

Option 1: Take my headline literally. Find someone you really like, drive out to a romantic spot, and let nature take its course. See how it goes.

Option 2: Be yourself! The world wants to put you into a category. They want you to be a "tax accountant" or a "landscape architect," but not both. When you try to do something that breaks the rules, everyone tells you how stupid you are. That's what they told Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman, who wrote all the songs on Bat Out of Hell.

In his autobiography, Meat Loaf recalls how record executive Clive Davis yelled at them when he rejected their album:

Do you know how to write a song? Do you know anything about writing? If you're going to write for records, it goes like this: A, B, C, B, C, C. I don't know what you're doing. You're doing A, D, F, G, B, D, C. You don't know how to write a song... Have you ever listened to pop music? Have you ever heard any rock-and-roll music... You should go downstairs when you leave here... and buy some rock-and-roll records.

If you like to fit in, by all means - fit in. But if you have something burning inside you that doesn't neatly fit any category, create a new category. My guess is that other people are just waiting for you to lead the way. Start this weekend.

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Download your free copy of Bruce's guide, SIMPLIFY YOUR FUTURE: Simple Principles for Complicated Times, at Kasanoff.com.

Image credit: detail of "Bat Out of Hell" cover illustrated by Richard Corben.