Meat Loaf says his album Couldn't Have Said It Better, set for release Tuesday, was supposed to be his last. But there's been a slight change of plans.

"Yeah, we're doing it," he says from his Toronto hotel room, the "it" referring to Bat Out Of Hell III. "That's why I said this was going to be the last record, but we're going to do III. I'm not going to tour. I may do a show or two but I'm not going to tour."

The musician, who wants to concentrate on his acting career under his real name Michael Lee Aday, is currently in the middle of his last world tour. It's a tour he knew would be his last for some time.

"I wish it was over already," he says. "I've just had a bad summer, I've had (emergency intestinal) surgery, and then I got really ill, and then I got freaked out, and I've been stressed. When we went out on tour last summer and it was called the Just Having Fun For The Summer Tour, it really was fun.

"Not all the shows have been as good as I wanted. I had these terrible nights in the dry climate and I'm sick and I don't actually know I'm sick. I hate cancelling so I just keep going anyway. And then people can tell me how good the show was and I want to shoot them."

Meat Loaf rose to stardom with an appearance in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but his fame reached new heights with his 1977 album Bat Out Of Hell, which has sold more than 30 million copies. The songs he wrote with Jim Steinman, such as Paradise By The Dashboard Light and the title track, were instant classics.

The 57-year-old says his new album was more enjoyable to make than 1995's Welcome To The Neighborhood.

"Welcome To The Neighborhood was a rush-rush, push-push thing," he says. "In fact every album except Bat and this one have been rush-rush, push-push. You gotta get it done! You gotta get it done! Every one of them!

"So I said, 'I'll never do it again.' And I didn't, I waited until I thought, 'Okay, I have nothing else left to say right now on this record. I have no other scenes in my head.' It's really not what I'm saying but what scene I'm playing, and have all the scenes been played inside this little play? All the scenes that should have been there were there."

Meat Loaf says that while he juggles both acting and music, he doesn't see any difference between the two.

"What you take is reality, you make them real," he says. "That's what acting is and that's what it should be when you're on stage. But I don't see too many performers on a rock stage who make it real. You're just singing words and singing melodies if you're paying attention to the audience.

"It would be like going to see Shakespeare and the guy is doing, 'All the world's a stage...' from As You Like It. Instead of being in that world, he's out cruising the front row and then giving them high-fives. People would be going, 'What is this clown doing?' If you're going to sing a song, there's no difference."

The singer says he might consider running for politics given the state of the world. He lost two friends in the 9/11 terrorist attacks while he was at the Toronto International Film Festival promoting the film Focus.

"(The world) is almost like Alice In Wonderland, The Mad Hatter, it's lost its mind," he says. "It's completely insane. It's just completely gone to hell in a hand basket.

"At least if I go do a show, I'm going to Kansas and 12,000 people show up they don't have to worry about what's going on for the next two, or two-and-a-half hours. Let's go off on a dream, let's go on a road trip."

One thing you'll never find him doing is reading his own press, and for good reason.

"There was a show that I got sick and we cancelled," he recounts with a laugh. "And the next day we were still in that town. There was a review of the show in the paper. And it was a good review, too!"