The one Aerosmith song “too depressing” to be a hit
There aren’t any real rules about what constitutes a band having a hit single. All the public is worried about is whether they can sing along to some of their favourite tunes when they come on the radio, and people like Sting have learned that if you have a melody that’s strong enough, you can convince anyone to sing lyrics that have to do with some pretty questionable material. However, for a band that seemed desperate for hits, as Aerosmith were in the 1990s, they could see when things weren’t working with a song.
However, if you told the 1970s Aerosmith fans back in the day that they would be all over the radio, they would have said you were crazy. ‘Walk This Way’ and ‘Sweet Emotion’ had done okay in the charts, but looking at where they went after they got their 1980s makeover, anyone who bought a copy of Rocks back in the day was never expecting them to make something like ‘Crazy’ or ‘Livin’ On the Edge’.
It’s not like they didn’t get the right guys for the job, either. Desmond Child was one of the best songwriters in the business when they asked for his help in finishing songs like ‘Angel’, but by the time of Get A Grip, things started to take a turn. The album itself is still phenomenal by Aerosmith standards, but judging by the fact that ‘Cryin’ and ‘Crazy’ feel like the exact same song with different lyrics, they had a specific genre they were catering to, and Nine Lives was them capitalising on it.
The idea of getting the same person who produced Alanis Morissette was certainly a strange choice, but between some legitimately great songs, there were ballads so toothless and stupid to defend like ‘Pink’, which is about exactly what you think it’s about. But they truly felt like they had an ace in the hole with ‘Hole In My Soul.’
After all, the makings of a classic Aerosmith ballads were all there, but according to guitarist Brad Whitford, the song itself was too much of a downer to resonate with the public, saying, “Maybe it was just too depressing, but I remember being in the studio thinking that this sounded to me like it would end up being played on the radio or having more appeal than it ended up having. But that’s what we go through. You create this music, and you always have high hopes for it, and it doesn’t always work out that way.”
Granted, that’s a pretty flimsy argument compared to every other song on the radio. They had come off the heels of grunge, which was all about despair, so it’s not like a sad song was unprecedented on the charts, but when looking at how Steven Tyler delivers his tunes, this kind of tearful ballad doesn’t suit his voice nearly as much.
And it also may have looked a little bit too commercial, given where pop music was at the time. Sad songs still existed, but since this was also the era where acts like Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears were about to explode, the idea of having Tyler sing a song with that production was bound to be more than a little bit awkward, especially since he was old enough to be any boy band’s crazy uncle.
‘I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing’ may have fulfilled the potential that ‘Hole in My Soul’ started with, but either way, this was an omen for some of the more hard-edged rock and roll fans. Things were about to start changing really fast, and unless listeners wanted to be around to see Tyler sing about the ‘Girls of Summer’, they probably would have done better sitting things out for a few records.
