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"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.
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.
In interviews, Meat Loaf has said that, in his mind, the song was always meant to be a duet. It was recorded as a duet by Meat Loaf and Marion Raven for the album Bat out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose, produced by Desmond Child. Raven had been working on her solo album with Child, and was chosen because the timbre of her voice starkly contrasts to Meat Loaf's.
In promotional interviews, Meat Loaf said that "I believe that the version that Marion Raven and myself did on this album is the definitive version."
Meat Loaf cried when he first heard the song, which "is the only time that's happened." He has also said that the song could refer to Steinman and himself, with an array of emotions coming back every time they work together. Referring to lines like 'when I kiss you like that', he said that although "I love Jim Steinman', he wouldn't French kiss him!"
To me it wasn't a song about romance, it was about me and Jim Steinman. We'd had a load of problems with managers in the early '80s and all of a sudden after five years we started to communicate. After I'd been to his house, he sent me the song, and it was "It's All Coming Back To Me Now". Not the line 'When you kiss me like that', but the emotional connection. It doesn't have to be literal."
The website Allmusic called the song 'a tormented ballad about romantic loss and regret built on a spooky yet heart-wrenching piano melody'. The torment is present in the song's opening ('There were nights when the wind was so cold'), from which the singer recovers ('I finished crying in the instant that you left… And I banished every memory you and I had ever made'). However, the defiance in the verses are replaced by the return of the 'subservient' feelings in the chorus ('when you touch me like this, and you hold me like that…'); this juxtaposition continues throughout the song.
'There were those empty threats and hollow lies
'And whenever you tried to hurt me
'I just hurt you even worse and so much deeper.'
Eroticism is implied in the lines 'There were nights of endless pleasure' and 'The flesh and the fantasies: all coming back to me'. The song ends with a passionate, quiet reprise of the chorus. Critics have also identified Wagner, of whom Steinman is an admirer, as an inspiration. Specifying this song, the Sunday Times said "the theme of Wagner's opera Tristan and Isolde, with its extreme passions and obsessive love, informs all his best work."
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