Reception
The song reached number one in the charts in 28 countries. In most countries, it was Meat Loaf's first and only number one solo single. It was number one in the US five weeks. In the UK, it topped the singles chart, and at seven minutes and 52 seconds, "I'd Do Anything For Love" becoming the longest song on top there since The Beatles' hit "Hey Jude". This was then broken when Oasis released their 1997 hit "All Around The World", clocking in at 9 minutes and 20 seconds.
In the UK, this was the biggest hit of 1993, selling 761,200 copies and staying at number one for seven weeks. As a result of its success, "Bat Out of Hell" was reissued in the UK, this time reaching the top ten (which it didn't achieve on its first release in 1979), meaning Meat Loaf achieved the rare feat of having two singles in the UK Top Ten at the same time.
In Germany, the song is the 7th best-selling pop hymn ever.
Critical reaction was mixed. Allmusic said that "Meat Loaf sells the borderline-campy lyrics with a full-throated vocal whose stirring sense of conviction brings out the heart hidden behind the clever phrases." Meat Loaf won a Grammy Award for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Solo for the song.
Read more about this topic: I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)