Aerosmith Ballads: Their 20 Best Tearjerkers

If there’s one factor Aerosmith is aware of do, it is medication. If there’s one other factor Aerosmith is aware of do, it is writing a killer energy ballad.

Weepy, lovesick mega-ballads grew to become the band’s stock-in-trade once they launched their miraculous comeback within the late ’80s, spearheaded by the No. 3 hit “Angel” from 1987’s Permanent Vacation. A slew of supersized love songs adopted over the following decade, together with the epic “What It Takes,” “Cryin'” and their sole chart-topper, “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.”

But Aerosmith’s balladeering expertise far predate their business second wind. They’ve been incorporating them into their repertoire ever since they included the epochal “Dream On” on their 1973 debut album, and practically all of their ’70s data featured not less than one equally tearjerking tune.

As with most issues Aerosmith, their ’70s ballads differ drastically from their shiny, MTV-ready ’80s and ’90s ballads, however every part of their profession incorporates a number of gems. Read on to see UCR’s rating of the Top 20 Aerosmith Ballads.

20. “Avant Garden”
From: Just Push Play (2001)

“Avant Garden” most likely will not (and should not) be topping any best-of Aerosmith lists anytime quickly, nevertheless it deserves a nod merely for being eons higher than different schmaltzy, cheeseball Just Push Play cuts like “Fly Away From Here” and “Luv Lies.” Its sunny, psychedelic pop-rock stylings sound refreshingly natural in comparison with the remainder of the album’s determined makes an attempt at modernity, and Steven Tyler sounds convincingly craving, significantly within the anguished, minor-key bridge. If the band had shaved two and a half minutes off this tune, it’d rank even greater.

19. “Closer”
From: Music From Another Dimension! (2012)

Music From Another Dimension! incorporates so many ballads, they are often separated into two factions: blockbuster spectacles just like the Carrie Underwood-assisted “Can’t Stop Loving You” and extra subdued, melancholy fare like “Closer.” Tyler sounds forlorn and world-weary as he sings in regards to the push and pull of a thorny love affair over lilting guitar arpeggios and weeping solos. Deliberately paced and pleasantly unadorned, “Closer” blends the ragged jam band vitality of Aerosmith’s youth with the large-scale pop ambitions of their later years.

18. “Lay It Down”
From: O, Yeah! Ultimate Aerosmith Hits (2002)

Aerosmith linked up with producer, singer and Jodeci member DeVante Swing for “Lay It Down,” certainly one of two new songs issued on the double-disc O, Yeah! Ultimate Aerosmith Hits compilation. Centered largely on a fragile piano melody and a dynamic vocal efficiency from Tyler, it isn’t radically totally different than something on the earlier yr’s Just Push Play, however the manufacturing is significantly much less overwrought and it contains a stellar bridge, which is sufficient to earn it a slot on this record.

17. “Tell Me”
From: Music From Another Dimension!

Bassist Tom Hamilton makes his first foray into lyric-writing and will get Aerosmith again to their ’60s rock roots on the wistful “Tell Me,” which evokes the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood” with its jangly acoustic guitars, plinking mandolin and luxurious vocal harmonies. Tyler’s voice has a barely oaken high quality, however he nonetheless summons his stadium-rock grandeur in the hovering choruses and delivers his trademark falsetto shriek with gusto. “I don’t know how [Hamilton] can put being not in love in such eloquent terms – we can argue about that later,” Tyler enthused to Rolling Stone when the tune got here out. “It’s just genius.”

16. “Deuces Are Wild”
From: The Beavis and Butt-Head Experience (1993)

Aerosmith perfected their latter-day mix of poppy, gritty energy balladry on Get a Grip, and so they have been nonetheless firing on all cylinders when “Deuces Are Wild” surfaced on The Beavis and Butt-Head Experience compilation in late 1993. (The band issued it as a promo single early the next yr.) The choruses soar to a budget seats, whereas a bluesy harmonica solo and Joe Perry’s swampy slide guitar maintain it firmly rooted within the hard-rock realm. As Butt-Head appropriately proclaims on the finish of the tune: “These guys are the kings of rock. There is none higher.”

15. “Another Last Goodbye”
From: Music From Another Dimension!

Of the numerous, many ballads on Music From Another Dimension!, album nearer “Another Last Goodbye” is probably the most creative and convicted. The plaintive piano and string association evokes the mid-’70s basic “You See Me Crying,” whereas the attractive vocal harmonies take cues from the Beach Boys. The cracks in Tyler’s sturdy voice lend the tune an emotional heft, and contours like “You thaw your frozen heart out in somebody else’s flames” have longtime co-writer Desmond Child’s fingerprints throughout them. If “Another Last Goodbye” is certainly Aerosmith’s closing send-off, it is an ideal approach to exit.

14. “Amazing”
From: Get a Grip (1993)

Tyler is in full restoration mode on Get a Grip‘s fourth single, spitting self-help platitudes like “Life’s a journey, not a destination” and demanding to know the way excessive you’ll be able to fly with damaged wings. It would sound trite within the fingers of lesser musicians, however Tyler sinks his tooth into each syllable because the band rocks studiously behind him. Perry slashes by way of the somber piano chords, and his scorching, two-minute outro solo jolts “Amazing” into elite energy ballad territory.

13. “Angel”
From: Permanent Vacation (1988)

“Tyler says that I ruined his career by making him write ‘Angel’ with Desmond [Child],” Geffen Records A&R guru John Kalodner lamented within the 1997 Aerosmith autobiography Walk This Way. If that is the case, it was a stupendous act of sabotage. Behind the boomy late-’80s manufacturing and wounded-puppy lyrics, “Angel” packs a treasure trove of deliciously heartsick melodies and a zesty solo from Perry. Its splashy (albeit completely cliche) music video assured MTV supremacy, and “Angel” unsurprisingly vaulted to No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, Aerosmith’s second-biggest hit behind “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.”

12. “Full Circle”
From: Nine Lives (1997)

The four-year hole between Get a Grip and Nine Lives was full of non-public {and professional} turmoil for Aerosmith, so it is becoming that the grizzled music trade veterans returned with an old school consuming anthem about the worth of residing within the second. “Full Circle” is a welcome change from the band’s typical heartsick mega-ballads, stuffed with blistering guitar work and catchy one-liners like “Don’t piss heaven off, we’ve got hell to pay.” We’ll drink to that.

11. “Hole in My Soul”
From: Nine Lives

The tentpole ballad off 1997’s Nine Lives was one other collaboration amongst Tyler, Perry and Child, and it is acquired the identical supersized choruses and vivid storytelling of their former smashes. The lead guitar work is greater than slightly harking back to “Dream On,” however Tyler compensates with some intelligent vocalizing and slick turns of phrase: “I know there’s been all kinds of shoes underneath your bed / Now I sleep with my boots on, but you’re still in my head.”

10. “Mia”
From: Night within the Ruts (1979)

Unlike the monstrous, hook-laden energy ballads of Aerosmith’s late-’80s and early-’90s reign, Night within the Ruts’ nearer “Mia” is a tastefully restrained quantity that depends nearly solely on Tyler’s piano and vocals. The singer wrote the tune for his daughter Mia amid the band’s drug-fueled implosion, and it stays a haunting, remarkably lucid parting shot that presages their demise. “It was a lullaby I wrote on the piano for my daughter, but the tolling bell notes at the end of the song and the end of the album sounded more like the death knell of Aerosmith for people who knew what was going on,” Tyler mentioned in Walk This Way.

9. “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing”
From: Armageddon: The Album (1998)

For many old-school Aerosmith followers, “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” was the final straw — the second the band plunged headfirst into pop after dipping its toes within the water for greater than a decade. It’s exhausting in charge them. Scoring a No. 1 hit off a Diane Warren composition that appeared on the Armageddon soundtrack was a textbook sellout transfer. Is there even a guitar on this factor? It would not matter, as a result of for those who divorce the tune from its context, “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” is a pop masterstroke. Tyler did not write the lyrics, however he interprets them as in the event that they have been etched onto his soul. It was the last word Faustian cut price, forcing Aerosmith — particularly Tyler — to fruitlessly chase that ephemeral excessive for the remainder of their profession. It simply may need been value it.

8. “Cryin'”
From: Get a Grip

“Cryin'” is the quintessential comeback-era Aerosmith energy ballad — a bluesy, blustery, runaway freight practice of supersized hooks that’s scientifically inconceivable to not sing alongside to. Forget a few gradual burn: The band tears into the tune at a “10” and refuses to let up for 5 minutes. There’s a red-hot guitar solo, adopted by a harmonica solo, adopted by one other guitar solo, all whereas Tyler wails so exhausting his head sounds prefer it’ll pop off his neck. It’s peak pop-rock melodrama and the consummation of the whole lot Aerosmith had been working towards since they acquired their second lease on life.

7. “Crazy”
From: Get a Grip

For most rock bands, a “Cryin'”-level smash would have happy their energy ballad quota for one album. But Aerosmith has by no means been a band to observe moderation, so that they doused “Cryin'” in a brand new coat of paint, doubled the harmonicas, renamed it “Crazy” and positioned it two songs afterward the identical album. “Crazy” is the marginally grittier companion to “Cryin’,” stuffed with bluesy guitar licks and engaging phrasing from Tyler. It’s a testomony to the standard of each songs and to Aerosmith’s imperial early-’90s reign that “Crazy” promptly adopted its successor into the Top 20.

6. “Ain’t That a Bitch”
From: Nine Lives

The beleaguered Nine Lives did not match the gross sales of its predecessors, however its performances are dynamite, most of all of the volcanic energy ballad “Ain’t That a Bitch.” Its brassy, forlorn verses juxtapose with towering choruses, and Tyler’s ear-piercing screams would make singers half his age blush. His spectacular scat-singing within the outro jam is in contrast to something Aerosmith ever recorded, and “Ain’t That a Bitch” places lots of their extra business ballads to disgrace.

5. “You See Me Crying”
From: Toys within the Attic (1975)

When Tyler sits down on the piano, magic occurs. “You See Me Crying” ends the star-making Toys within the Attic in grandiose style — an old-timey, unabashed weeper replete with a full orchestral association and a smoldering Brad Whitford solo. The tune is so good — and Tyler was so strung out — that when a DJ performed it for the newly reunited band in 1984, Tyler prompt they cowl it, to which Perry replied, “It’s us, fuckhead.”

4. “What It Takes”
From: Pump (1989)

Most followers rightfully affiliate Aerosmith’s comeback period revival with their seemingly countless string of hit ballads, however their second (and finest) post-rehab album, Pump, incorporates just one — and it is one of many most spellbinding of their profession. “What It Takes” shirks the manicured melodrama of the earlier album’s “Angel” in favor of poignant, country-flecked instrumentation and disarmingly tender vocals. “It’s a ballad, but it’s not a schmaltzy ballad,” Hamilton instructed Rolling Stone in 2019. “The emotion in it is very real and it has a beautiful set of chord changes.”

3. “Seasons of Wither”
From: Get Your Wings (1974)

On the entire, Aerosmith’s sophomore album marked a quantum leap in songwriting over their self-titled debut. The shift is finest illustrated within the haunting quasi-ballad “Seasons of Wither,” a grasp class in musical dynamics and eerie storytelling. “I used to lie in my bed at dawn, listening to the wind in the bare trees, how lonely and melancholy it sounded,” Tyler mentioned in Walk This Way. “One night I went down to the basement … and took a few Tuinals and a few Seconals and I scooped up this guitar Joey [Kramer] gave me, this Dumpster guitar, and I lit some incense and wrote ‘Seasons of Wither.'” Even the ballad-averse Perry referred to as it his favourite of Aerosmith’s repertoire.

2. “Home Tonight”
From: Rocks (1976)

Just as “You See Me Crying” introduced Toys within the Attic to a shocking shut, “Home Tonight” ends the follow-up album Rocks in spectacular, heartrending style. Whereas the previous went for orchestral maximalism, “Home Tonight” is a minimalist masterpiece, anchored round Tyler’s good piano work and searing, weeping guitar work. The frontman sings with determined longing, and the scant, simplistic lyrics evoke a craving and nostalgia for experiences listeners may not have even felt themselves.

1. “Dream On”
From: Aerosmith (1973)

The tune that launched a profession and one million lighters within the air, “Dream On” stays Aerosmith’s magnum opus and one of many best songs within the basic rock canon. Tyler had nothing to lose and the world to achieve when he wrote it as a young person, and his burning need for stardom is sort of quaint in its purity. Every component of the band’s efficiency is note-perfect, proper right down to Tyler’s cathartic, soon-to-be-signature scream, and “Dream On” rightfully endures as an anthem for anybody who’s ever dared to need one thing out of their life.