"Making Love Out of Nothing At All" is a power ballad written and composed by Jim Steinman and first released by Australian soft rock band Air Supply for their 1983 compilation album Greatest Hits. It reached #2 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.
The song has been covered by many other artists, the most successful being that of the singer behind another Steinman song, Bonnie Tyler.
The song is a reworking of the main title theme from the 1980 film A Small Circle of Friends, for which Jim Steinman wrote the score.[1]It was first recorded by Air Supply, giving them a number two hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S. for three weeks. It was held off from the top spot by another Steinman production, Bonnie Tyler's recording of "Total Eclipse of the Heart".
The song was subsequently released as a new track from their 1983 greatest hits album. The B-side of the single was "Late Again".[2]They have included the song on their numerous greatest hits and live albums, and recorded an acoustic version for their 2005 albumThe Singer and the Song.[3]
Steinman offered the song, along with "Total Eclipse of the Heart", to Meat Loaf for his Midnight at the Lost and Found album; however, Meat Loaf's record company refused to pay Steinman for the material so Meat Loaf ended up writing compositions for the album himself. Steinman's songs were then offered to Bonnie Tyler and Air Supply.[4]
By 1983, Air Supply had changed much of its classic musician line-up, both in the recording studio and on tour. But Steinman, known for his lavish, rock-opera-ish type productions, used Bruce Springsteen's E-Street Band members Roy Bittan on keyboards and Max Weinberg on drums, to musically underscore the recording with like energies. Glam-rock icon of the 1970s Rick Derringer supplied the electric guitar solo that made the sound of "Making Love Out of Nothing At All" stand so drastically apart from most other Air Supply productions.
Music and lyrics[edit]
The song opens with a few bars of the melody played on piano. The first part of the song lists several things that the vocalist knows how to do, followed by something that they do not. The structure is similar to Steinman's "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)", where the chorus consists of things that the vocalist would and then would not do.
And I know just where to touch you
And I know just what to prove
I know when to pull you closer
And I know when to let you loose
Like the final lines of each chorus in "Anything for Love", the end of "Making Love" contrasts with the previous stating what he doesn'tknow how to do. The final part of the verse laments:
But I don't know how to leave you
And I'll never let you fall
And I don't know how you do it
Making love out of nothing at all
The title is repeated six times, with background vocals supplying the "making love" part, and the lead vocalist singing the last part of the line.
Strong drumbeats begin the next section of the song, which concentrates upon the attributes of its subject:
Every time I see you all the rays of the sun
Are streaming through the waves in your hair
And every star in the sky is taking aim at your eyes like a spotlight
There is an instrumental interlude, dominated by the melody of the title line played by piano. The final verse returns to the structure of the first. The original Air Supply version had an American football analogy, with "I can make the runner stumble, I can make the final block; And I can make every tackle at the sound of the whistle, I can make all the stadiums rock."
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