Did ‘I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing’ ruin Aerosmith?
When Aerosmith’s syrupy, Armageddon-buoyed ballad ‘I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing’ hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1998, it was, remarkably enough, the first and only time Steven Tyler and the boys topped the US chart.
In retrospect, one could also see it as the moment they jumped the rock n’ roll shark, so to speak. The band that once looked like reliable torch bearers for “pure rock” in its loudest, swaggiest, blues-rooted form were now recording intricately arranged and over-produced torch songs for terrible disaster movies. It was a disaster unto itself.
Much like an asteroid slowly hurtling toward Earth, though, this doomsday scenario for Aerosmith didn’t happen overnight. For fans who’d hopped on the bandwagon back in the days of Get Your Wings or Toys in the Attic, the slow sappification of their once feral rock heroes had been a slow burn spanning more than a decade.
After nearly imploding in the early 1980s due to drug abuse, infighting, and fading relevance, Aerosmith calculated a comeback that was largely predicated on collaboration and giving the reins over to other creative voices. Their 1986 re-do of ‘Walk This Way’ with Run-DMC was the most adventurous and rewarding example of this game plan, and gave them a new lifeline and mainstream cachet. But it was the slickly produced albums Permanent Vacation (1987), Pump (1989), and Get a Grip (1993) that permanently rebranded Aerosmith for the MTV generation. These records were flush with great power ballads that paired with memorable videos, but they were also polished pop nuggets often written by hired guns from the world of professional hit-making.
One of those writers, Desmond Child, penned three of the band’s biggest hits: ‘Angel’, ‘What It Takes’, and ‘Crazy’ (not to mention the horrific ‘Dude Looks Like a Lady’) all while spending his free time doing the same work for the likes of Cher, Ricky Martin, and Michael Bolton.
With this in mind, it was hardly bizarre to learn that Aerosmith had accepted the aid of another proven hitmaker in Diane Warren, who was fresh off the success of Celine Dion’s 1996 radio staple ‘Because You Loved Me’. Hearing Aerosmith tackle Warren’s lush arrangement of ‘I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing’ wasn’t a curveball to anybody who’d been watching the band’s trajectory during the 1990s. As grunge took over the rock landscape earlier in the decade, Aerosmith never pretended it belonged in the “alternative” category, nor did they see much point in turning back the clock to their drug-plagued ‘70s albums, when Steven Tyler sounded like a completely different person. Instead, they nestled into the Bon Jovi category of arena rock anthems, only occasionally nudged back into the youth culture with the aid of their music video starlets Alicia Silverstone and Liv Tyler, Steven’s daughter.
From sleazy streetwise survivors to stadium-filling softies, Aerosmith were now unashamedly the ultimate middle-America rock band, loved by grizzled old rockers and non-cussing suburban aunties alike. The band was no longer trying to be dangerous; they were now safe enough for a car commercial and grand enough for a prom theme.
Armageddon, ironically, was just the final step in that journey. Once ‘I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing’ had become the band’s new calling card, the table was set for Aerosmith as a 21st-century entity. Aside from one brief return to their roots on the 2004 album Honkin’ on Bobo, the work followed a more Ben Affleckian than Steve Buscemian course. Aerosmith put out a song with country-popster Carrie Underwood and were now regular guests on the talent show that had created her, American Idol, with Tyler eventually becoming a judge on the programme. Joe Perry lent his guitar skills to unlikely stars like Blake Shelton and Robin Thicke.
The band had remained in the public consciousness for 50 years—no easy feat, but some of their legacy had certainly been tarnished. The wild abandon of those early records were a distant memory. Sometimes it’s OK, it turns out, to miss a thing.
