I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)
Meat Loaf
The nouns are a set of oaths: vow, pact, promise, prayers. Unusual vocabulary for pop and useful far beyond it, because these are the words English keeps for anything formal and binding — contracts, weddings, courtrooms. Learn them as a group rather than one at a time. The verb to watch is I'll be there, where a contraction hides two whole words; beginners hear one syllable and cannot recover the will and the be inside it, which is exactly why spoken English is so much harder than written English. Around all that sits a deliberately grand set of images: planets, stars, thunder, hell, ice. B2- is fair, and the song is long enough that every structure comes round repeatedly.
How to study this song
Learning “I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)” means 78 entries at B2- — 48 English words, 18 adjectives and 12 verb forms, every one taken from what the song actually says. The glossary is the place to begin — act, control and dreams are the song’s keywords. It is unusually descriptive — 18 adjectives alongside 48 everyday words — so expect colour rather than plot. At this level the words on their own are not the problem — it is the way they are put together that takes the work.
The words of this song, in several languages
Every word below is taken from this song and translated by us. Nothing here is the lyric itself — these are the individual words you need in order to follow it.
Vocabulary
| EN | ES | IT | FR | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| act | acto | atto | acte | ato | daad | Tat |
| control | control | controllo | contrôle | controle | controle | Kontrolle |
| dreams | sueños | sogni | rêves | sonhos | dromen | Träume |
| fact | hecho | fatto | fait | fato |
What this song teaches you
Level · B2-
- Vocabulary words
- 48
- Adjectives
- 18
- Word combos
- 11
- Expressions
- 10
- Verb forms
- 12
- Quiz questions
- 35
More English songs at this level
Background
About the song
“I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)” is the epic, operatic rock ballad by Meat Loaf, released in 1993 as the lead single from “Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell”.
Written and produced by his long-time collaborator Jim Steinman, it is a sprawling, theatrical production of over ten minutes in its album form, full of dramatic dynamics and a teasing lyric whose famous “that” Meat Loaf always insisted the song itself explains.
Jim Steinman wrote and produced it, and the woman answering Meat Loaf in the duet section is Lorraine Crosby, credited on the album only as “Mrs. Loud”. The album version runs twelve minutes; the single was cut to just over five.
Did you know?
The single reached number one in the UK, where it stayed on top for seven weeks, and also topped the US Billboard Hot 100, spectacularly reviving Meat Loaf’s career more than a decade after the original “Bat Out of Hell”.
It won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Vocal Performance and became one of the biggest rock singles of the 1990s.
Charts & streaming
“I’d Do Anything for Love” was a multi-million-selling global hit and the engine behind the huge success of “Bat Out of Hell II”. It remains Meat Loaf’s best-known single from that era and a staple of rock radio and streaming.
Released in the autumn of 1993, it reached number one in twenty-eight countries and was Britain’s best-selling single of that year with 723,000 copies.