Meat Loaf Declared ‘Greatest Summer Song’ Champion

The votes are all in, and it's Meat Loaf in a landslide.

For our Greatest Summer Songs battle, we started with 32 of classic rock’s best summertime songs and used your votes to repeatedly cut the number of contestants in half until we arrived at the final round, which squared Meat Loaf's "You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night)" off against Bryan Adams' "Summer of '69." With just over 60 percent of the vote, it's official: Meat's the people's champion.

Both artists got involved in their campaign, stumping for votes via social media; in fact, Adams even recorded a pair of videos showing himself performing "Summer of '69" solo on acoustic guitar. Meat's Facebook page, meanwhile, featured a slew of posts urging fans to get out and show their support.

In the end, it was the Meat Loaf faithful who turned out in greater numbers — just as they did for the majority of our tournament. Although Meat barely squeaked past Judas Priest in the opening round, he rebounded with decisive victories, cruising past the Cars and easily defeating Van Halen. With his Greatest Summer Song status safely in the bag, he took to Twitter to thank a group of fans he's called "the greatest":

There can only be one Greatest Summer Song, but we at Ultimate Classic Rock would like to extend our appreciation to each of our contestants, thank everyone for voting and remind the readers that while "You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night)" won the tournament, each of the songs on our list make for terrific summertime listening in their own right — and if you put 'em all together, you've got a fine playlist for those last few dog days before Labor Day rolls around.

Watch Meat Loaf Perform 'You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night)'

See Meat Loaf and Other Rockers in the Top 100 Albums of the '70s