"Paradise by the Dashboard Light" is a song written by Jim Steinman. It was first released in 1977 on the album Bat Out of Hell, with vocals by the American musician Meat Loaf alongside Ellen Foley. The song is most notable for its unique structure and length, and has become a staple of classic rock radio.

"Paradise by the Dashboard Light" is one of the longest songs to be released uncut on one side of a 45 RPM record. The only difference is the song fades out almost immediately after the final line is sung. In some countries, a shorter 5:32 edit was released. The largest change is the complete removal of the "baseball play-by-play" section.

According to Meat Loaf on VH1 Storytellers, the original length of the track was to be 27 minutes.

The song is divided into three parts:

The song opens with the characters reminiscing about days as a young high school couple on a date. They are parking by a lake and having fun, experiencing "paradise by the dashboard light", until the male character insists they're "gonna go all the way tonight" (the audio track suddenly cuts out, quickly pans through the left and right channels once before slowly returning to both channels).

His pushing the matter is mirrored by New York Yankees announcer Phil Rizzuto broadcasting a portion of a baseball game that serves as a metaphor for his attempts to achieve his goal, accompanied by funk instrumentation and the two characters talking in the two individual left and right channels.

Rizzuto's baseball play-by-play call was recorded in 1976 at The Hit Factory in New York City by producer Todd Rundgren, Meat Loaf and Steinman. Rizzuto publicly maintained he was unaware that his contribution would be equated with sex in the finished song, but Meat Loaf asserts that Rizzuto only feigned ignorance to stifle some criticism from a priest and was fully aware of the context of what he was recording.

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Wikipedia