In five short minutes, this song takes all the teenage emotions of lust, love, and angst and delivers them to the listener in the lines “You were licking your lips and your lipstick shining, I was dying just to ask for a taste”. What an absolutely perfect lyric. That said, the album “Bat Out Of Hell” is pure fluff, fun fluff but with nothing truly interesting to say. I have always viewed this album as parody, particularly of Springsteen from that era whose “epic” numbers on “Born to Run” always seemed so contrived and pretentious. In that light, Meatloaf’s parody is hysterical fun and Bruce comes off as a poser.

This song is a haunting examination of the mind of a killer, at least as perceived by Ray Davies. I am not sure if Ray had a specific person in mind but thoughts of the infamous people that society has bread fly through my head as I hear this song. The song hooks you in from the start, “I see so little hope in you…” and makes the listener pay attention to the end. What a fine nugget this song is.