The one singer Steven Tyler thanked God for existing: “You can’t deny that”
The rock and roll world looks a lot different these days than when Steven Tyler first started Aerosmith.
Although the frontman has tried to roll with the punches every single time the band came out with a new record, seeing them get more poppy as the years have gone on is simply the nature of the beast. Every single rock and roll band has a few records that are a bit more mainstream than the others, but being one of the biggest bands in the world has never been taboo for Tyler.
No one works on that kind of screaming register to be ignored, and even when the band were first starting, Tyler was testing different spaces within his own voice to wow people. The kind of throat-shredding that he was doing hadn’t been heard since the days of Janis Joplin, and when you listen to what they were playing during those first few years, it was all about trying to make the same kind of bluesy tunes that set their hearts on fire when they first heard the British invasion.
But Tyler’s musical taste ran a lot deeper than rock and roll. Joe Perry may have been rooted in blues rock for most of his life, but long before Tyler was even in a band, he was already listening to his father play classical music. The sound of artists like Bach and Brahms are already there when you listen to tunes like ‘Dream On’ or even the more advanced parts of ‘Janie’s Got A Gun’, but it was never going to work if Tyler didn’t have the right voices to teach him.
Yes, there were people like Mick Jagger and Robert Plant in the early days, but there was a lot more R&B in his delivery than anyone would have thought of. Smokey Robinson meant as much to him as The Stones whenever he threw on those records, but when he made his way into the 2000s, that kind of singing wasn’t really a priority anymore. Autotune had become the norm, but Adele was the exception to every single rule when she came out in 2009.
While many people found a way to make Autotune sound perfect in the right context, there was no one who could beat what Adele was doing on her first hits. She may have been indebted to the legends like Amy Winehouse, but when listening to songs like ‘Rolling in the Deep’, there were pieces of rock, soul, and even old-school blues that Tyler saw as a breath of fresh air.
Because whereas most people were following the pop star playbook, Tyler thanked his lucky stars that someone like Adele was paving the way for truly great vocalists, saying, “Thank God, she opened up that genre of music and made it really cool. You can’t deny that blues.” And it’s not like she has suddenly stopped after she became one of the biggest stars in the world following 21.
The wait between her albums may seem like an eternity in the age of instant gratification, but tunes like ‘Easy on Me’ hit much differently than the average pop song that comes on the radio. Other stars like to overload their ProTools sessions with as many overdubbed lines as possible, but all she needed was her voice and a piano to deliver the kind of song that could rip someone’s heart out when they heard it.
So while Tyler might have tried his hand to bring his own authenticity to a show like American Idol, Adele is still out there proving that people don’t need to go on game shows to get noticed. All they need is a dream in their heart and the willingness to do everything they can to bend their voice in whatever shape they want to.
