The Top 250 Pop Hits of the Last 50 Years - #243 It's All Coming Back To Me Now - Celine Dion

"It's All Coming Back to Me Now" is a power ballad, written by Jim Steinman. According to Steinman the song was inspired by Wuthering Heights, and was an attempt to write "the most passionate, romantic song" he could ever create. The Sunday Times posits that "Steinman protects his songs as if they were his children". Meat Loaf had wanted to record "It's All Coming Back..." for years, but Steinman saw it as a "woman's song." Steinman won a court movement preventing Meat Loaf from recording it. Céline Dion went on to record it, which upset Meat Loaf because he was going to use it for a planned album with the working title Bat out of Hell III. Alternately, Meat Loaf has said the song was intended for Bat out of Hell II and given to the singer in 1986, but that they both decided to use "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)" for Bat II, and save this song for Bat III.

The song is the first on Dion's album Falling into You. Steinman produced the track, with Steven Rinkoff and Roy Bittan as co-producers. Bat out of Hell and Meat Loaf collaborators Todd Rundgren, Eric Troyer, Rory Dodd,Glen Burtnick and Kasim Sulton provided backing vocals. An edited version of the song was then released on Celine's album Celine Dion All The Way... A Decade Of Song. On Celine's Falling Into You album the song's original length is seven minutes and thirty-seven seconds while on her All The Way album it is only five minutes and thirty-one seconds.

In 2008, "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" was included on Dion's greatest hits compilation My Love: Essential Collection. Live performances can be found in the A New Day... Live in Las Vegas and Taking Chances World Tour: The Concert albums. Her album My Love: Essential Collection restores the song back to its original length.

Critical reception[edit]

The song attracted generally positive reviews. The Calgary Sun stated: "[The song] is undoubtedly the highlight of her English-language recording career. Dion's over-the-top vocals soar and swoop around Steinman's epic, ostentatious arrangement. Not surprisingly, everything else that follows... pales in comparison." Toronto's Eye Weekly said Steinman's "fatal absence from the last Meat Loaf record is finally justified here," and The Miami Herald said "Dion knocks a couple out of the ballpark... [the song] features seven minutes of Wagnerian bombast, thunderclap piano chords and emoting that would wither an opera diva. Sure, it's over-the-top but it's passionate and musical." Allmusic senior editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine marked this song as a standout along with "Falling Into You" and praised it: "Dion shines on mock epics like Jim Steinman's "It's All Coming Back to Me Now." The New York Times' Stephen Holden wrote: "The melodrama peaks with two overblown Jim Steinman productions: "It's All Coming Back to Me Now," a romantic flashback replete with thunderclaps... "

Some other reviews were less enthusiastic. After labelling Dion "a Madonna-meets-Meat Loaf vocal freak", The Vancouver Sun called the song "intensely self-indulgent, pompously self-important and mediocre beyond belief, the song just never ends." The Ottawa Sun called it 'turgid', while The Toronto Sun, coincidentally, said that it "sounds like a Meat Loaf reject." 

According to the Sunday Times, Andrew Lloyd Webber told Steinman he thought this song "the greatest love song ever written," and on hearing the Dion version reportedly said: "This will be the record of the millennium."

Music video[edit]

Nigel Dick directed the music video for Dion's version, with Simon Archer as cinematographer and Jaromir Svarc as art director. It was shot between June 29 and July 3, 1996 in the summer palace of the Austrian Emperor, Ploskovice and Barandov Studios, Prague, Czech Republic; it was later released in July 1996. Castle Ploskovice in Ploskovice supplied the exterior of the gothic mansion. There are two versions of this music video; the full version (about 7:44 in length) and the single version (about 6:00 in length). Both of them are included on Dion's 2001 DVD video collection All the Way… A Decade of Song & Video.

The video opens with a man dying in an explosive motorcycle crash, after lightning strikes a tree down in his path. Dion's character is haunted by her lover's image, which she sees through a mirror, and images of them together through picture frames. There are stylistic similarities to Russell Mulcahy's video for Steinman's "Total Eclipse of the Heart", to the extent that Slant Magazine calls Dick's video an update. Dion is seen running alone through a dark, gothic mansion, with wind blowing through the open windows.

Official versions[edit]

Several versions of the CD single were released in 1996. They featured the songs "The Power of the Dream", "Le fils de Superman", "Fly", "To Love You More", and a live version of "Where Does My Heart Beat Now"; a cassette and 7" vinyl version were also released. Another CD contained several dance remixes, although these attracted negative reviews. While praising its original form, Allmusic said that 'as a dance song, it misses the mark...the final 'Moran' mix is a little better [than the other dance mixes] because the vocals don't pop up until three and a half minutes into the song'.