Essential Aerosmith: Their 40 greatest songs, ranked

Added as fanbait to a contract-fulfilling compilation, “Devil’s Got A New Disguise” kicked around in different forms for years. Its roots lay in the sessions for Pump, then it was cobbled together into something resembling a song during the making of Get A Grip, then pulled off the shelf in 2006 when Aerosmith had no other material to add to a new record. Maybe that’s why the song seems much more assured than latter-day Aerosmith: it genuinely is from a different era.

A leftover from the Pump sessions, “Deuces Are Wild” was revived in 1994 when Aerosmith needed a contribution for The Beavis and Butt-Head Experience album. Like so much of Pump, “Deuces Are Wild” is high-grade AOR, crammed with hooks and delivered at maximum volume. No wonder it wound up being as big a radio hit as anything on Get A Grip: it was meant to be played on the radio, long and loud.

The lone highlight from the fallow period without Joe Perry, Aerosmith cut “Lightning Strikes” just before Brad Whitford decided he had enough and left for greener pastures. The rest of the accompanying Rock In A Hard Place is a slog but this has some real vitality.

Co-written with a Glen Ballard who was then riding high on his production for Alanis Morisette’s Jagged Little Pill, “Falling In Love (Is Hard On The Knees)” is a sterling example of big-budget pop/rock circa 1997. Its kitchen sink production pushes everything—blaring horns, vocal overdubs, plunking pianos—to the forefront except the guitars, which grind and wail deep in the mix as if they were being piped in from another building. The end result is almost counterintuitive: it’s Aerosmith attempting to act like an anonymous pop band but they have too much skill and personality to accurately fulfill the assignment.

The second of three singles bearing a one-word title and a video starring Alicia Silverstone, “Amazing” feels the least Aerosmith of them all, possibly due to it being co-written by Steven Tyler and his longtime friend Richie Supa, possibly due to the presence of Don Henley, who is felt more than heard. Just when the stately tempo and strings seem a tad claustrophobic, Joe Perry comes on at the end with a dramatic solo that helps give the song another dimension, making it feel as if it belongs in the long line of Aerosmith power ballads.

Originally a Joe Perry solo number—it was the title track on a record where he was depicted staring down a room full of suits armed with nothing but a reel-to-reel tape recorder—Aerosmith revived the tune for their 1985 reunion. In the hands of the full band, “Let The Music Do The Talking” sounds bold and brawny, the first sign that the group could reconnect to their tawdry beginnings.

Possibly the straightest blooze boogie on Rocks, “Lick And A Promise” still sounds every bit as heavy as the rest of the record. That could be because Joey Kramer is barreling down on the backbeat, snapping the loose riff back into focus, or it could be because Steven’s Tyler’s patter isn’t as manic as it often was in the mid-1970s. The heaviness is a feature, not a bug: it feels as if Aerosmith is either progressing or descending, and it doesn’t matter much to them which direction they take.

Another post-Jagged Little Pill collaboration with Glen Ballard, “Pink” finds Aerosmith trying to turn Steven Tyler’s gynecological obsessions into rock and roll bubblegum. Although this is underpinned by a heavy backbeat, “Pink” is lighter than most Aerosmith tracks, with layers of guitars that sound nearly airy. The extra space highlights the slight wear and tear on Tyler’s voice, making his single-entendre puns sound even more lascivious

One of the first Steven Tyler power ballads to have a serious romantic undercurrent—unlike either “Dream On” or “Seasons Of Wither,” it seems as if he’s addressing a lover, not ruminating to himself—“Home Tonight” functions as a sweet coda on the otherwise relentless Rocks. Which is not to say there isn’t some muscle fueling the ballad—the song closes with a soaring solo supported by an ever-insistent drum beat—but it has a softness that almost seems like a relief after “Nobody’s Fault” and “Back In The Saddle.”

Maybe it’s a bit, well, rich for a band of millionaires to be bitching about the rich, but “Eat The Rich”—the song that kicks off Aerosmith’s 1993 album Get A Grip—is remarkably hard and manic, sounding lean and angry in a way they did not on Pump. The beat is heavier and the guitars are too, melding into a propulsive locomotive that Steven Tyler gleefully rides with his rapid-fire putdowns.

A brooding, churning ballad, “Kings And Queens” almost feels like an answer to Led Zeppelin’s “Achilles Last Stand.” It may proceed at slower tempo and it may be half as long but “Kings And Queens” finds Steven Tyler attempting to wrangle his very modern sensibility around holy war legends. The tension between the two approaches is heightened by Aerosmith’s moody creep, highlighted by an unusually melodic bass line from Tom Hamilton and synths that act like strings.

The song that brought Aerosmith back to the pop charts, “Dude (Looks Like A Lady)” may sound antiquated from a modern perspective. Its central conceit of mistaking a man for a woman can be read as trans panic—the second verse concludes with “Then she whipped out a gun/And tried to blow me away”—but there’s not a palpable sense of maliciousness here. Aerosmith plays “Dude (Looks Like A Lady)” as a joke, treating it as a novelty and that lightheartedness is the song’s saving grace.

The last single released from Aerosmith’s comeback album Permanent Vacation, “Rag Doll” is the first to have a direct connection to the bluesy bluster that fueled their 1970s heyday. There are differences, of course. The Bruce Fairbairn production is big and glossy, making Joey Kramer’s drums seem cavernous and giving inordinate space to horns that probably are supposed to evoke R&B but sound showbiz splashy. Despite all this, “Rag Doll” still rips: Aerosmith sounds like they’re having a blast riding its swinging groove, making a ruckus like they used to do.

“The Other Side” finds Aerosmith playing against several of their instincts, tempering their fondness for blues boogie so they can indulge in overcooked psychedelic pop. Joey Kramer ensures that the song still swings but producer Bruce Fairbairn keeps the focus on Steve Tyler’s melodic gymnastics, pushing his hooks and counterhooks to the forefront then surrounding them with harmonies and horns that make the track seem busier than it is. The result is more of a record than a song but it’s still a bit of an irresistible pop confection.

As steely as any mid-1980s production can be but considerably meaner, “My Fist Your Face” pulled off a rare trick: it sounded like the times while also still reviving the sleazy spirit of Aerosmith. Compared to the slipperiness of Rocks, “My Fist Your Face” sounds a bit tight and straight but that also makes the group sound like they’re playing with purpose for the first time since that 1976 masterpiece.

A quintessential document of a band burned out on the road, “No More No More” finds Steven Tyler running through a litany of familiar sights from tour: Holiday Inns, bar rooms, ladies and clothes falling apart at the seams. The circular chorus of “No More, No More” suggests that the band wants to get off the merry go round but the heavy boogie of the beat hints that they’re more than fine staying right where they are.

A departure from Steven Tyler’s previous introspective power ballads, “You See Me Crying” breaks outside of the singer/songwriter’s head both lyrically and musically. A more conventional ballad than “Seasons Of Wither,” the song is distinguished by its lushness: it’s not just the orchestra that lends the song a sense of majesty but Tyler’s piano playing has a distinct McCartney-esque bent, underscoring his deep melodic gifts in a way few early Aerosmith recordings do.

Maybe the heaviest song Aerosmith ever recorded, “Nobody’s Fault” pummels its blues-based riff into submission, flattening it so it’s a blunt instrument. The growling riff sounds even heavier thanks to the low rumble of Tom Hamilton and Joey Kramer, a rhythm section who make the conscious decision to sap the song of swing, turning it into a relentless harbinger of doom.

Leave it to Aerosmith to strip away any question of what Bull Moose Jackson’s blues classic “Big Ten Inch Record” is all about. Steven Tyler’s grinning leer leaves no doubt that he’s not really singing about a stack of wax, a modernist phrasing that enlivens the band’s attempt to deliver a relatively straightforward jump blues. That Aerosmith can’t quite play it straight is the key to why their version is so much fun: no matter what they do, they remain the same sleaze merchants that brought you “Lord Of The Thighs” and “Walk This Way.”

Steven Tyler co-wrote “Angel” with Desmond Child, a professional songwriter who was fresh off of his success with Bon Jovi. Child helped Tyler steer his signature balladry toward something grand and romantic, making sure that every emotional and musical gesture was overstated. The gambit worked. Not only did “Angel” become a Top 10 hit—their first since the re-release of “Dream On” in 1976—it minted the blueprint for the kind of overblown power ballad that kept Aerosmith on the top of the charts through the end of the 1990s.

Losing the slinky majesty of the Beatles original, Aerosmith turns the throwback rock of “Come Together” into something slippery and dirty. Joey Kramer hits the backbeat a shade too hard, the guitars don’t swing and Steven Tyler devours every one of John Lennon’s rhymes, relishing their playfulness and unsavory connotations. In other words, they pull off a mighty trick: they make a Beatles tune sound like an Aerosmith original.

The first and best of three similar one-word singles on Get A Grip, “Cryin’” contains some old-fashioned bones—it rides to a swaying half-time beat, Steven Tyler sings about being broken hearted—but it’s given a high-octane sheen. It’s impossible to discern what instruments are on the track or how many there are: it’s an avalanche of guitars, horns and harmonies, each exaggerated element helping to drive home one of the purest melodies the band’s ever written.

With their relationship starting to fracture, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry wrote only a handful of songs for Draw The Line, the best of which was the title track. “Draw The Line” evolved into a showcase for Perry’s guitar antics. Underpinned by a growling riff that snarls like “Back In The Saddle,” the song pushes Tyler into the murk created by layers of overdubbed six strings, including wailing slide guitars and jangling single-notes.

The last big hit Aerosmith ever had, “Jaded” simultaneously crystallizes the band’s outsized 1990s sound while offering a departure from many of the band’s cliches. Neither a power ballad nor a heavy rocker, “Jaded” offers a surprising jolt of candied power pop buoyed by sinewy, ringing guitars that are halfway between the Byrds and Britpop. Over this joyous noise, Steven Tyler sings a melody that sighs and soars, lending the song a touch of melancholy to cut against its inherent sweetness.

There’s no escaping what “Love In An Elevator” is about: every other line offers a punchline to the joke set up before it, each a leering Steven Tyler pun about making out on an elevator. The thing that makes “Love In An Elevator” work is that Aerosmith and producer Bruce Fairbairn treat the song as the absurdity it is, larding it up with aural effects, call-and-response vocals, woozy psychedelic harmonies, scads of guitar and swiping a trumpet line from “Penny Lane” for its coda.

Steven Tyler unveils his horndog persona with a punning play on William Golding’s middle school classic, Lord Of The Flies, with a funky, piano-driven vamp that’s surprisingly dramatic. As Joey Kramer lays down a thick backbeat, Tyler pounds out quarter notes on the piano, creating a tense atmosphere that gives his leering come-ons a real sense of danger.

Acting as guns-for-hire when they signed on to contribute music to the soundtrack to Michael Bay’s absurd adventure flick Armageddon, Aerosmith gave the production—which featured Steven Tyler’s daughter Liv in a starring role—one oldie (“Sweet Emotion”), one outtake (“What Kind Of Love Are You On”) and agreed to cut “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing,” a ballad written by professional songwriter Dianne Warren. When she wrote the song, Warren pictured it being sung by a pop diva and, in a sense, her wish came true because few other rock stars are as big a diva as Steven Tyler. “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” is entirely his show. He milks the lyric for melodrama, he yelps and wails, he makes it seem like he believes in its cornball sentiments. Without that performance, the song wouldn’t have become a hit that stayed at the top of the charts for four weeks.

A sequel of sorts to “Dream On,” “Seasons Of Wither” finds Steven Tyler returning to the power ballad milieu. Again, he’s not especially concerned with romantic matters. There’s an existential wind blowing through “Seasons Of Wither,” a snowbound, skeletal loneliness that’s alleviated by the escalating might of Aerosmith, who build this to a dramatic coda that feels earned, not histrionic.

The first great song Steven Tyler and Joe Perry wrote together, “Same Old Song and Dance” is a loose boogie delivered with the subtlety of a locomotive. Perry’s slippery blues riff flirts with glam, setting the stage for Tyler’s hep-talking jive which, in turn, allows the horns to seem not quite so incongruous: together, the blare of the horns and the boasts of the vocalists create a tie to the earliest days of jump blues.

Picking up not from the Johnny Burnette Trio original but the frenzied Yardbirds cover, Aerosmith gives the pummeling riff a chunky backbeat that’s nearly funky, a difference that makes it seem heavier than the Yardbirds’ squalling rocker, a spirit that carries through when they pick up the tempo in the second half of their rendition.

A constant in Aerosmith’s catalog prior to Pump was their general reluctance to tackle any self-consciously serious subject. That all changed with “Janie’s Got A Gun,” a well-intentioned melodrama concerning child abuse. Bruce Fairbairn’s production has all the drama of a TV movie yet he keeps his focus on Steven Tyler’s lyrics. Tyler’s anger is apparent as are his vulgar instincts (“He jacked a little bitty baby, the man has got to be insane”), yet the tension between these two aspects gives “Janie’s Got A Gun” palpable passion.

Brad Whitford and Steven Tyler concocted this sinewy, funky rocker, a song that gets considerable mileage out of its heightened sense of swing. Certainly, the rhythms help soft-pedal Tyler’s vulgar jive which reaches an apotheosis on the second verse when he’s singing about a “hot tail pooontang sweetheart,” a line that’s easy to miss when the harmonies, drums and riff all line up to deliver a thick, sweaty groove.

Like “Cryin’,” “Crazy” sways to a half-time beat, but this time Aerosmith softens their attack: they don’t sound defiant, they sound heartbroken, their ache accentuated by sweet strings that are given the space to roam. Like “Cryin’,” “Crazy” also feels a bit of a retro-throwback to the days of slow dances at a sock hop, which is why it works so exceptionally well. Aerosmith leans into its melancholy undercurrent and Tyler gives one of his more nuanced lead vocals; he still yelps and wails but they’re not the focus, they’re necessary accents.

Tearing into its gutter-boogie at double speed, Aerosmith flirts with the beginnings of either punk or speed-metal, depending on your point of view. The breakneck velocity seems nearly manic, a sensibility that suits the impending madness Steven Tyler documents with his lyrics. The nastiness of the song makes it Aerosmith’s clearest connection with metal so far, which is why it’s amusing that R.E.M. delivered an appropriately ragged version of “Toys In The Attic” on a B-side where it mussed up the beauty of its A-side, “Fall On Me.” The kings of jangle-pop proved that “Toys In The Attic” sounded best in the garage.

The first flowering of the sleazy boogie that became Aerosmith’s stock in trade, “Mama Kin” gains momentum from its greasy riff—more blown-out blooze than blues-rock—and Steven Tyler’s maniacal motormouth. Spinning fantasies of doing nothing, dredging up old hipster slang for marijuana, and yearning for a gypsy life, Tyler invents the very idea of a ’70s stoner—an archetype he’d return to again and again.

Working again with Desmond Child, the professional songsmith who helped bring Aerosmith back to the pop charts with “Angel,” Aerosmith composed the best of their middle-aged ballads with “What It Takes.” What separates “What It Takes” from the rest of the group’s power ballads is that Joe Perry was involved in the writing, helping to steer the song back to its country origins—a sound producer Bruce Fairbairn teases out with his decision to layer in an accordion throughout the song. On top of that, Tyler gives an open-hearted performance: where he seems to be navigating a melody on “Angel,” it feels as if he taps into real emotion here.

Lean and mean, “Back In The Saddle” gets its swagger from a riff Joe Perry wrote on a six-string bass. The riff has a low, menacing rumble that overpowers Steven Tyler’s cowboy cliches as well as a rare lead guitar part from Tom Hamilton: it’s all a looming threat, which is what made it the ideal opener for the greasy and grimy Rocks.

One of Steven Tyler’s earliest compositions, “Dream On” does carry the vaguest air of adolescent aspirations in its lyrics. The fact that Tyler doesn’t center this prototypical power ballad on romance adds to its enduring power, particularly in how it offers imagined versions of loss and sin. Those words are open-ended enough to allow for different interpretations at different stages of Aerosmith’s career; depending on the day, it can sound like a song about hope or a song about regret.

Opening with a bass-heavy groove that creeps forward like a haze of fog from a bong, “Sweet Emotion” eventually descends into a grimy blues riff that gives the song an earthy kick. Despite this dose of grease and an underlying sense of menace, “Sweet Emotion” never loses that slightly stoned feeling, an atmosphere that gives it an appealing dreamlike quality that enhances its essential earthiness.

Perhaps “Walk This Way” is an obvious choice to top a list of best Aerosmith songs but it also crystallizes everything the Boston band does well. First, the stop-start blues riff from Joe Perry commands attention, then Joey Kramer and Tom Hamilton lay down a beat that’s deftly funky despite its heaviness. Then, there’s Steven Tyler, who spits out tales of suburban high school melodrama at a pace so quick that when Run-DMC covered the song for a groundbreaking hip-hop hit a decade later, they had to slow it down. Whether it’s the music or words, “Walk This Way” is quintessential Aerosmith: it’s the distilled essence of sleaze.