Meat Loaf, a singer and actor, first gained notoriety in 1968 and remained so until his passing in 2022, but fans are only now understanding what his name means.
Fans still have no idea where Meat Loaf came from or what its significance is despite having been a well-known musician and actor for more than 60 years.
The American-born singer first released music with his band, Meat Loaf Soul, who had their first performance in California in 1968. At the same time, the singer also started his acting career, with the singer mainly starring in different musicals. Throughout his career, Meat Loaf released 12 studio albums, which included hit songs like ‘I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)’, ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Light’.
After having sold sold more than 100 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time, the singer died at age 74 in January 2022. While no official cause of death was released, he was reportedly sick with COVID-19 earlier that same month.
The performer, who was born Marvin Lee Aday and later referred to as Michael Lee Aday, was known by his unique stage name. What does the name mean and where did it come from, though?
Taking to Reddit’s Today I Learned forum, one user was eager to reveal the supposed origin of the singer’s name.
When he was born, his father thought he was “nine and a half pounds of ground chuck,” according to the singer Meat Loaf (born Marvin Lee Aday), and gave him the nickname “Meat” (Til). The players and coaches changed the name to “Meat Loaf” years later when he was a heavyset teenage football player.
Over the years, Meat Loaf offered various explanations for his moniker and even told The Guardian in 2003 that “names and ages piss me off. So I just continually lie.”
Meat Loaf appears to have started using the nickname years before his music and acting career even started, despite the name’s constantly changing origin story.
Meat Loaf claimed he got the first half of his name from his father shortly after he was born. The musician said on Oprah Winfrey’s Where Are They Now series in 2016 that he was “born bright red,” explaining that his father told the hospital to put a “Meat” tag in front of his crib because he “looked like nine-and-a-half pounds of ground chuck” as a newborn.
When Meat Loaf “stepped on a coach’s foot and he screamed, “Get off my foot, you hunk of meatloaf! “, he told Winfrey, in eighth grade, that he had received the “Loaf” half of his nickname.
However, the singer made a different interpretation of the tale available to the public in 1978. He claimed at the time that his name was influenced by his size while attending Dallas University. The rocker claimed he has never been weighed below 185 pounds.
He also spun another tale about his name’s origins, according to The New York Times, which reports that the artist also claimed an incident with a Volkswagen was responsible for his nickname.
Source: Mirror
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