Meat Loaf: 'The Voice doesn’t prepare young stars for success'

The rocker thinks that TV talent shows don't do singers any favours
Speaking out: Meat Loaf thinks that shows like The Voice don't prepare young artists for sucess
Ferdy Damman/AFP/Getty Images
Robert Dex @RobDexES5 September 2016
The Weekender

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Reality show judges are failing to prepare their young stars for success on stage, according to veteran rocker Meat Loaf.

The singer, who is coming to London this week ahead of the release of his 13th studio album, said judges on shows such as the US version of The Voice had got “the theory” wrong.

“I see these judges telling singers things I totally disagree with, [like] ‘feel the song’,” he said.

“I’d say, ‘You don’t feel the song — you own the song, believe the song, are the song.’

“You hear them say, ‘You’ve got to control the stage.’ I’d say, ‘Don’t control the stage, control the room.’

They will say they loved what they did with the front row. I’d say, ‘Don’t ever do that to the front row, that is making the back rows feel like it’s an inside joke.’”

The 68-year-old, who has sold more than 80 million re-cords and first toured his Bat Out Of Hell show in 1977, added: “You play to everyone in the room.

"I get more messages after a show from people that say they were sitting in Row 6,000 and it felt like I was singing to them.

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"That’s my goal: that that person at the back feels like I’m singing to them and no one else.”

New album Braver Than We Are sees him team up with collaborator Jim Steinman almost 40 years after they dominated the charts with Bat Out Of Hell. Its first track, Who Needs The Young?, was originally intended for that 1977 release but was cut to save space.

Meat Loaf, born Marvin Lee Aday in Dallas, said they had to speed up the songs on Bat Out Of Hell to make it fit on a vinyl record:

“When people go, ‘He doesn’t sound like on Bat Out Of Hell’ my answer is, ‘I’ve never sounded like that.’ I used to turn [the radio] off because I sounded like Alvin from the Chipmunks.”

Meat Loaf will sign copies of Braver Than We Are at HMV at 363 Oxford Street, on Thursday.

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