Readers’ Poll: The 10 Best Aerosmith Songs of All Time

It's half-forgotten now but, in the early 1980s, Aerosmith were completely washed up. Joe Perry and Brad Whitford had left the band and Steven Tyler was a strung-out mess. They seemed like one of many 1970s bands sleepwalking through their old hits on the club circuit and releasing albums that were dead on arrival.

Unlike, say, Grand Funk Railroad, Aerosmith were unwilling to roll over and die. They caught a lucky break when Rick Rubin brought them into the studio with Run-DMC for a remake of "Walk This Way," and they followed it up with a series of increasingly popular albums for Geffen. Their success was partially explained by a willingness to work with outside songwriters. Desmond Child helped Bon Jovi craft "Livin' on a Prayer," and shortly after that, he co-write the ballad "What It Takes" with Joe Perry and Steven Tyler. It was the fourth single on Pump, and it shot to Number Nine on the Billboard Hot 100. Even many Aerosmith fans who hate the ballads tend to make an exception for this one. 

Aerosmith were riding very high in 1976. They had finally broken through to the Top 40 the previous year with "Walk This Way" and they had graduated from clubs to arenas. Many fans feel this period peaked with the release of Rocks in May 1976. It opens with "Back in the Saddle" and doesn't let up until the finale of "Home Tonight." The second track, the über-funky "Last Child," was written by Steven Tyler and guitarist Brad Whitford. It was the first single from the LP, and it peaked at Number Nine. It remains Whitford's signature song and it's been in their setlist for decades. 

Aerosmith have never been a band that tackled serious issues but, in 1989, Steven Tyler read an article in Newsweek about gun violence and began writing a deceptively dark song about a girl who kills her sexually abusive father. The lyrics originally went "He raped a little bitty baby," but he ultimately changed it to "He jacked a little bitty baby" so it could get some radio play. The song still stirred up some controversy because some thought it encouraged vigilante justice. Nevertheless, the video went into heavy rotation on MTV and the song reached Number Four on the Hot 100. 

Everything that's great about Aerosmith was apparent on their 1973 debut LP, but it took a couple of years for the world to catch on. "Dream On" was the only song from the disc to score on the charts, peaking at Number 59. (Three years later, a re-release reached Number Six.) The single "Mama Kin" didn't come close to entering the charts, even though most fans today regard it as one of their finest.

"That was a song I brought with me when I joined Aerosmith," Steven Tyler says in the band's oral history, Walk This Way. "I took the lick from an old Blodwyn Pig song…I had so much confidence in that song, I had 'Ma Kin' tattooed on my arm." Around the time the song came out, Aerosmith were dismissed as a poor man's Rolling Stones. Thirteen years later, Guns N' Roses put a cover of the song on their debut EP Live  ?!*@ Like a Suicide. Critics dismissed them as a poor man's Aerosmith. 

Aerosmith first teamed up with producer Jack Douglas on their second LP, Get Your Wings, in 1974. Nearly 40 years later, Douglas is still working with the band and he's responsible for many of their greatest works. Get Your Wings didn't have a single hit on it, but nearly every track is a fan favorite. The mournful "Seasons of Wither" was written by Steven Tyler at a house he shared with Joey Kramer near an old chicken farm in Needham, Massachusetts. "I was pissed off about my taxes and getting mad helps me to write," Tyler said. "So one night I went down to the basement where we had a rug on the floor and a couple of boxes of furniture and took a few Tuinals and a few Seconals and I scooped up this guitar Joey gave me, this Dumpster guitar, and I lit some incense and wrote 'Seasons of Wither.'"