Steven Tyler names the most “classic opening line” for a hit song
There’s no real accurate way to teach what Steven Tyler can do every time he opens his mouth.
Even though Aerosmith ditched the idea of touring the world one more time, seeing them was usually a chance to hear what Tyler could do whenever he channelled that fifth gear that he had in his voice whenever he sang tunes like ‘Dream On’ or ‘Cryin’. It’s miraculous that anyone could sing that consistently for so long, but he felt that the true key to being a great songwriter came with the lyrics before anything else.
Because while Aerosmith’s lyric sheet is normally about sex, drugs, and more sex half the time, it’s not like every single one of their tunes is pure smut or anything. Tyler did like to express his desire for carnal knowledge more than a few times when he made new records, but for every song that followed the same playbook as ‘Walk This Way’, there were tunes like ‘Angel’ that had a more romantic tinge to them.
Admittedly, the band did have the help of some professional songwriters on some of those tunes, but this is one of the few cases where that’s not exactly a bad thing, either. Desmond Child plugged himself into the band’s internal chemistry and knew exactly what they were going for when making some of their tunes on Permanent Vacation, and there’s no doubt that they are thanking their lucky stars every single day for becoming friends with Diane Warren when making ‘I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing’.
Those songwriters were truly gifted beyond compare, but what Tyler was looking for is something that he could sink his teeth into whenever he sang something into. I mean, think about it for a second. ‘A Day in the Life’ by The Beatles, ‘Blowin’ In the Wind’ by Bob Dylan, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ by Nirvana. All of them are great songs, but the reason why they are all so iconic is because they have individual lines that you could quote back to someone without any music.
Not all of it is meant to be conversational, but when listening to Smokey Robinson sing, Tyler said that he had everything you could have wanted in a singer. His knack for melodies and the way that he sang was among the finest vocals that the Motown hit factory had ever spit out, but when listening to him sing ‘You Really Got A Hold On Me’, he couldn’t resist the tune from the minute that Robinson hit that opening line.
This was a song of pure heartache, and Tyler was all in, saying, “It’s the classic opening line for a song. ‘I don’t like you but I love you/Seems that I’m always thinking of you.’ It’s like ‘WHAT?’ [That’s] just brilliant.” And it’s not like you couldn’t hear a fair bit of that kind of heartbreak song in a lot of Aerosmith’s later records as well.
Say what you want about them selling out and making their money off of ballads, but it’s not like Tyler was openly trying to steal from all the flavours of the day back when making Get A Grip. That kind of selling out would have to wait a few years, but when working with Child on the song ‘Crazy’, they had that same kind of passion behind those songs as Robinson did when he started making ‘Tracks of My Tears’ and ‘Ooh Baby Baby’.
So while anyone can talk about Aerosmith selling their souls and going in a million different directions to stay relevant, the fact that their more pop-flavoured songs have endured is all down to what Robinson used to do. Tyler might not sound anything like him, but it’s impossible to think of the pop world being the same without that soulful voice.
