‘Magic Touch’: The first step Aerosmith made to selling out
Many different mysteries still surround rock history to this day. Many Beatles fans are still wondering about whether or not Paul McCartney was replaced with a lookalike back in the mid-1960s, and Led Zeppelin fanatics are also questioning what exactly happened between the band Vanilla Fudge and a mud shark one evening on tour. And as for Aerosmith, one question looms large above them all: when did they ‘sell out’? It’s not an easy question, but ‘Magic Touch’ makes the best case for them cashing in.
First of all, selling out is not exactly a bad thing if you know what you’re doing. Just look at one of Aerosmith’s contemporaries around that time: Queen. They had made the transition to pop music with ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ and ‘I Want to Break Free’, and yet they are still heralded as one of the greatest rock bands to ever walk the Earth.
But when looking at how ‘The Bad Boys From Boston’ approached their craft, it was a lot more drastic than anyone thought. Everyone had at least been on the same page when working on their album Done With Mirrors, but the minute that Permanent Vacation hit store shelves, something felt a lot different. The chemistry between Steven Tyler and Joe Perry was clearly intact, but fresh faces like Desmond Child were also behind the scenes making songwriting suggestions.
And by all accounts, it worked. ‘(Dude) Looks Like a Lady’ is still one of their signature tunes despite some completely tone-deaf lyrics, but if selling out meant that the group could still have tracks like ‘Rag Doll’ under their belt, it seemed like a fair trade. So even if the syrupy ballads like ‘Angel’ work, then what the hell happened two tracks in?
Looking at the song itself, ‘Magic Touch’ is far from the worst thing in the world. There are pieces of the track that scan properly as a decent hard rock song, but outside of the guitar solo, this is the first time where it seemed like Aerosmith were on autopilot playing someone else’s song. Since Child had hits with other hair metal acts by this point, this was the equivalent of a B-tier Bon Jovi song that suddenly became worthy enough for a rock institution.
And despite being known as one of the most iconic voices in rock, Tyler is hardly noticeable here, practically singing these lyrics as if he were reading them off of a cue card. But what did we know? The album put the group back on top and kept them going for another decade of hits, but maybe that was the biggest problem.
Because if this kind of half-hearted approach to rock and roll could work, surely something that completely phoned it in would work, too, right? Considering where Just Push Play would take them a decade ago, it wouldn’t be shocking if they took the same kind of sonic sheen approach they got out of their knockoff Bon Jovi song and paired it with the production style of Avril Lavigne around 2002.
That might seem like a bit too much to throw on a little piece of album filler, but even Aerosmith filler in the 1970s on records like Draw the Line was a lot more entertaining. You could still hear the five members inside when making those tunes, but ‘Magic Touch’ was the first time that Aerosmith made a song that could have been written by anyone and delivered it in the most soulless tone anyone could muster.
