The genre Steven Tyler called “the new rock and roll”
Everyone seems to have that same feeling when they listen to Steven Tyler for the first time.
Although Aerosmith might not have been the most original band in the world when they came out of Boston, Tyler’s voice was something that no one was really prepared for when ‘Dream On’ became a hit. Here was a guy taking the soaring register of Robert Plant and bringing in some of that Janis Joplin rasp, but over time, Tyler started to realise that breed of singer was a lot harder to come by than he thought.
Granted, there aren’t many people on this Earth who have the kind of stamina that he has to last throughout an entire show. There might be people bummed that they never got to see the band live, but if you look at how consistently he has sung from the days of Toys in the Attic to the present day, the thought of him pulling off those same tricks well into his 70s is far too much to ask of anyone.
Even Plant found some time to take his foot off the gas, and while Tyler doesn’t shy away from the high notes, there might have been a method to having him go towards pop music in his later years. It’s no secret that Tyler had some help hitting a few of those harmony lines when the band hit the arena circuit in the 2000s, but the last thing that anyone was prepared for was to see him turn towards American Idol.
The idea of selling out may not have been all that new for Aerosmith around that time, but hearing Tyler embrace his inner Simon Cowell was always going to be a polarising issue for the band. All his bandmates hated the fact that they were never told about the decision at the time, but if Joe Perry could let off steam playing down and dirty rock and roll in his solo career, the thought of Tyler embracing his inner country star was more than a little bit strange.
Tyler wasn’t really a country singer by any means, but he felt that everything that he loved about rock and roll could be found in modern country artists, saying, “Country is changing. Jaren Johnston and the Cadillac Three and Florida Georgia Line are proving that you can go any which way. Modern country might add a little a cappella or raps or heavier beats. God knows Brad Paisley plays guitar like a motherfucker. I think country is the new rock & roll — everyone is trying to stretch out.”
Before jumping down his throat, though, there is a case to be made for country rockers gaining a foothold in the music industry today. Chris Stapleton definitely had the same grit in his voice that you’d expect out of an arena rocker, and even if Eric Church is more straight-ahead country than most people, he has always had the same kind of outsider perspective that you’d expect out of someone like Bruce Springsteen.
On the other hand, it’s not hard to see what Tyler was trying to do on the album We’re All Somebody From Somewhere. The instrumentation was all there for a country throwback record, but since ‘The Girls of Summer’ was borrowing ideas from 2000s pop when he recorded it back in the day, Tyler seemed to be trying on his cowboy regalia in an attempt to fit in with what the kids were doing.
It was far from a bad look for him, but for anyone who was looking for him to go back to the days of ‘Mama Kin’, it’s clear that this is closer to where his head is as of late. After all, country artists have taken over the charts more than a few times, so all that we can hope for is that any future flirtation with country music is a lot closer to Stapleton than it is to Morgan Wallen.
