"It's All Coming Back to Me Now" is a power ballad written by Jim Steinman.According to Meat Loaf as indicated in , it was written for the first album in the Bat Out of Hell trilogy, recorded by Meat Loaf. According to Steinman, the song was inspired by Wuthering Heights and was intended as "the most passionate, romantic song" he could create. Meat Loaf, who had collaborated with Steinman on many of his hit songs, had wanted to record the track for years, but Steinman refused, saying he viewed it as a "woman's song". Steinman won a court case that prevented Meat Loaf from recording it. Girl group Pandora's Box recorded the first released version, and the song later became widely known through a cover by Celine Dion, which upset Meat Loaf because he had planned to use it for an album with the working title Bat Out of Hell III.
Alternatively, Meat Loaf has said the song was intended for Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell and given to him in 1986. Nico always believed the track was meant for Meat Loaf, but they decided to use "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)" for Bat II and save this song for Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose. Steinman also offered the song to Bonnie Tyler while she was recording Hide Your Heart with producer Desmond Child. Confident that it would be successful, she asked her record company to include it on the album, but they declined due to the cost of having Steinman produce it.
The song has had three major releases. The first version appeared on the concept album Original Sin, recorded by Pandora's Box. It was later recorded by Celine Dion for her album Falling into You, and her version became a commercial hit, reaching number one on the Canadian Singles Chart, number two on the US Billboard Hot 100, and number three on the UK Singles Chart in late 1996. Meat Loaf eventually recorded it as a duet with Norwegian singer Marion Raven for Bat III and released it as a single in 2006. This version reached number one in Norway and number six on the UK Singles Chart.
A music video was created for each of the three versions. Death appears as a recurring theme in all of them, aligning with the suggestion in Virgin Records' press release for Original Sin that "in Steinman's songs, the dead come to life and the living are doomed to die".
Inspiration
Influenced by Emily Brontë's novel Wuthering Heights, Steinman compared the song to 'Heathcliff digging up Cathy's corpse and dancing with it in the cold moonlight', a scene that does not appear in the novel. In his interpretation, which he imagined as having been removed from the book, the intensity of Heathcliff's obsession allows him to dance with a corpse on the beach, despite the West Yorkshire moors being landlocked:
This isn't the Wuthering Heights of Kate Bush—that little fanciful Wuthering Heights. The scene they always cut out is the scene when Heathcliff digs up Catherine's body and dances in the moonlight and on the beach with it. I think you can't get much more operatic or passionate than that. I was trying to write a song about dead things coming to life. I was trying to write a song about being enslaved and obsessed by love, not just enchanted and happy with it. It was about the dark side of love; about the ability to be resurrected by it... I just tried to put everything I could into it, and I'm real proud of it.
In another interview, Steinman expanded on his comments about the song addressing the 'dark side of love'.
It's about obsession, and that can be scary because you're not in control and you don't know where it's going to stop. It says that, at any point in somebody's life, when they loved somebody strongly enough and that person returns, a certain touch, a certain physical gesture can turn them from being defiant and disgusted with this person to being subservient again. And it's not just a pleasurable feeling that comes back, it's the complete terror and loss of control that comes back. And I think that's ultimately a great weapon.
AllMusic described the song as 'a tormented ballad about romantic loss and regret built on a spooky yet heart-wrenching piano melody'.
Eroticism is implied in the lines 'There were nights of endless pleasure' and 'The flesh and the fantasies: all coming back to me'. The song ends with a quiet, passionate reprise of the chorus. Critics have also noted the influence of Wagner, whom Steinman admired. Referring specifically to this song, The Sunday Times wrote that "the theme of Wagner's opera Tristan and Isolde, with its extreme passions and obsessive love, informs all his best work".
A 2007 article in the Toronto Star stated that the song was written as Steinman's "tryout" as lyricist for Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard.
Pandora's Box version
In 1989, Steinman produced the concept album Original Sin with the all-female group Pandora's Box. The album included several songs later recorded by other artists, particularly Meat Loaf. Elaine Caswell sang lead on "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" and reportedly collapsed five times during the recording.
For the track, Roy Bittan played grand piano, while Steinman and Jeff Bova handled keyboards. Guitars were performed by Eddie Martinez, with Steve Buslowe on bass guitar and Jimmy Bralower on drums. Todd Rundgren arranged the background vocals, performed by Ellen Foley, Gina Taylor, and Deliria Wilde. The song was issued as a single in the United Kingdom on 2 October 1989 and reached No. 51 on the UK Singles Chart.British Hit Singles, Guinness
The 7-inch, 12-inch, and CD singles included Steven Margoshes's piano solo "Pray Lewd" (which incorporates elements of "It's All Coming Back to Me Now"), Steinman's monologue "I've Been Dreaming Up a Storm Lately", and "Requiem Metal", a sample from Verdi's Requiem Mass, all taken from Original Sin.
Music video Ken Russell directed the video, filmed at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire. Journalist Mick Wall wrote that Russell's reputation for "mixing sex, fantasy, religion and death ... was the kind of director Jim Steinman had wished for in his various dream states". Steinman wrote the script, drawing on Russell's "Nessun Dorma" sequence in the opera anthology film Aria. Scholar Joseph Lanza described the video:
a woman's near-death experience [from a motorcycle crash] is set amid operatic excesses and black leather. In a simulated city engulfed by an apocalyptic blaze, British vocalist Elaine Caswell sings and takes part in a ritual to celebrate the song's "nights of sacred pleasure"... [The soundstage] is stocked with gravestones, motorcycles, pythons and dancers (allegedly from the London production of Cats), strapped in chaps, studded bras, and spiked codpieces.
The woman, close to death, is treated by paramedics while imagining scenes in which she is 'sexually aroused by a large python and writhing on a bed that lit up in time with the music, while surrounded by a group of bemused, semi-naked dancers'. When Steinman's manager viewed the footage, he exclaimed 'It's a porno movie!' Russell and Steinman also devised a sequence in which a motorcyclist would ride up the steps of a local church tower, leap from the top turrets, and explode, but the church wardens refused permission. The two-day shoot ran over schedule and budget, costing £35,000 an hour; Steinman paid the overtime himself.
Critical reception Upon release, Music & Media described "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" as "passionate, full-blown pop/rock" with "dramatic build-ups" and noted its similarity to T'Pau. Mark Matthews of the Hartlepool Mail praised Caswell's "strong vocal" but felt the track was "very laboured" and "sounds like it could have been taken from an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical". Dave Jennings of Melody Maker was negative, calling it "simply pompous and empty, like Bonnie Tyler's 'Total Eclipse of the Heart', but with a shrill, mechanical session singer draped on top".
In a review of Original Sin, Neil Jeffries of Kerrang! described the song as "excruciatingly operatic". Donald A. Guarisco, writing for AllMusic, called the "tormented ballad about romantic loss and regret" "built on a spooky yet heart-wrenching piano melody".
Charts Like the album, the Pandora's Box version of "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" was not a commercial success, which Steinman regarded as a "personal insult". He said "these songs are my children. I want them to do well, and if they don't, I don't just give up on them".
+ Chart (1989) Peakposition
Celine Dion version
"It's All Coming Back to Me Now" was covered by Canadian singer Celine Dion for her fourth English-language studio album, Falling into You (1996). Steinman produced the track, with Steven Rinkoff and Roy Bittan credited as co-producers. Bat Out of Hell and Meat Loaf collaborators Todd Rundgren, Eric Troyer, Rory Dodd, Glen Burtnik and Kasim Sulton provided backing vocals. This version used a modified version of the original Pandora's Box recording, with Caswell's vocals and certain instrumental passages removed.
On 26 October 1996, it peaked at number two on the US Billboard Hot 100 for five weeks, becoming the 34th biggest number two Hot 100 hit of all time. The full-length version, included on Falling into You, runs seven minutes and 37 seconds. A radio edit, lasting five minutes and 27 seconds, appears on all editions of Dion's first English-language greatest hits album, All the Way... A Decade of Song (1999).
According to The Sunday Times, Andrew Lloyd Webber told Steinman he believed the song was "the greatest love song ever written," and after hearing Dion's version reportedly said: "This will be the record of the millennium". In an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Elaine Caswell said she was shocked when she first heard Dion's version, often leaving public places in tears when it played. Caswell later met Dion when she joined her to record a cover of "River Deep, Mountain High". She said Dion had listened closely to her original vocal and hoped to match its tone.
The song was also included on Dion's 2008 greatest hits compilation My Love: Essential Collection. Live recordings appear on A New Day... Live in Las Vegas and Taking Chances World Tour: The Concert. Dion performed the song during her Falling into You: Around the World tour 1996/1997, Let's Talk About Love World Tour 1998/1999, Taking Chances World Tour 2008/2009, both of her Las Vegas residencies (A New Day... and Celine), European Tour 2013, Summer Tour 2016, the 2017 European tour, the 2018 tour, her British Summer Time performance in London's Hyde Park on 5 July 2019, and as the opening number on her 2019–2020 Courage World Tour.
Critical reception Dion's version received widespread praise. AllMusic senior editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine marked it as a standout along with "Falling into You", writing that "Celine shines on mock epics like Jim Steinman's 'It's All Coming Back to Me Now'". Larry Flick of Billboard magazine asked, "Is there a pop diva hotter than Dion right now?" and added that "lesser talents might have been gobbled up by his melodramatic arrangements, but Dion rises to the occasion with a performance that soars above the instrumentation with deliciously theatrical flair".
A reviewer from the Calgary Sun wrote that the song "is undoubtedly the highlight of her English-language recording career. Celine's over-the-top vocals soar and swoop around Steinman's epic, ostentatious arrangement. Not surprisingly, everything else that follows... pales in comparison". Pip Ellwood-Hughes of Entertainment Focus called it "one of the finest songs the singer has ever recorded", praising both its scale and its quieter emotional moments, and describing it as "nothing short of a rock opera".