Essential Aerosmith: Their 40 greatest songs, ranked
As Steven Tyler and Co. embark on their farewell tour, we count down the most memorable tracks by the Bad Boys from Boston
Music Lists Aerosmith
Over the course of 50-plus years as one of America’s foremost practitioners of the art of rock and roll, Aerosmith has experienced more than their share of highs and lows. Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, and company have delivered a string of hits across multiple decades while packing out stadiums around the world. They’ve also endured multiple breakups, makeups, comebacks, rehab stints, and legal challenges along the way. To be sure, the Toxic Twins moniker was well earned by Tyler and Perry during the band’s 1970s heyday, when Aerosmith was celebrated for being one of the dirtiest, grimiest acts in rock history, qualities that are still musically attractive even if some of Tyler’s lyrics can seem like artifacts from another era.
As Aerosmith kicks off their “Peace Out” farewell tour on September 2, the 40 songs we’ve assembled here serve as a reminder of the power, versatility, and longevity of a band that, for better and worse, helped define the rock star lifestyle. While longtime drummer Joey Kramer won’t be part of the tour because of a falling out with the rest of the group, his heavy, funky sense of rhythm remains an important component of the band’s success, as does Tom Hamilton’s muscular bass and the intertwined guitars of Joe Perry and Brad Whitford. That interplay is the one thing that still shines as brightly now as it did back when their records were originally released.
88 Comments
Kings and Queens should be top 5.
As should Let the Music Do the Talking. Just straight-up four on the floor rock.
I like Aerosmith, but I would put them in the “has a good Best of album” category, instead of the “has 40 great songs” category.
I think it depends on when you came to them. Before recognizing that ballads or silliness like Love in an Elevator and Dude Looks Like a Lady were the way to get rich they were a kick-ass, heavily blues-influenced hard rock band. They had a pretty rough ride through the early 80s so I don’t blame them for cashing in, but I’d venture most of their fans are much bigger on the older stuff.
I listened to enough classic rock radio in the 80’s to know that “Walk This Way” was not originally a Run-DMC song. To date, I have never had a burning desire to listen to a whole Aerosmith album.
None of their studio albums are mandatory front and back efforts, but Live Bootleg is fantastic. If I were to buy one Aerosmith record that would be it.
I agree. I can easily come up with 5 songs I love, and another 10 or so I enjoy. But 40?
The house band of Cringe.
How is “Amazing” the best of the three one word titled songs from Get a Grip ranked lower than “Crazy”? I don’t think the author knows how rankings work.
There are MAYBE 5 good Aerosmith songs.
No “Living on the Edge”???
It’s certainly better than Love in an Elevator or Dude Looks Like a Lady.
Yeah, you’re right, and that’s easily the most surprising omission.
Yeah some of their late 80s/early 90s jokey songs don’t belong so far up the list. Yes they were hits but were made specifically for broad consumption. I can’t believe Let the Music Do the Talking is in the 30s – it’s probably #1 on my list.
I think it’s a hell of a song and I still hear it on the radio.
I enjoy it even though I admittedly find it a bit cringy. I personally think their music lost a bit of its authenticity once they began bringing in outside songwriters.
FAR better than the insipid “Pink.”
Their version of “Mother Popcorn” from Live! Bootleg.
Aerosmith Top 10:
1. Combination
2. Rats In The Cellar
3. Bright Light Fright
4. Spaced
5. Seasons Of Wither
6. Toys In The Attic
7. One Way Street
8. My Fist Your Face
9. Movin’ Out
10. Cheese Cake
now I’ll plow through the slidefuckingshow to see how many made
the One True A.V.Club List
4/10. Not bad, given the forum.
Yeah, and I included 2 songs written & sung solely by Perry. That’s what kind of fan I am.
I’d categorize myself as a fan of rock and roll Aerosmith, not pop Aerosmith.
As someone who has listened to every album multiple times over the last 30 years, I just had to do my own Top 40. I won’t bore people with everything, but here’s my Top 10:1. Critical Mass
2. F.I.N.E.
3. Nobody’s Fault
4. Heart’s Done Time
5. Last Child
6. Toys In The Attic
7. Dream On
8. The Other Side
9. Kings & Queens
10. Love In An ElevatorNowhere on my list: Home Tonight, You See Me Crying, anything after Get A Grip, or I Don’t Want To Miss A Fucking Thing …
Now that you say, I could probably swap Cheese Cake for Kings & Queens.
Livin’ on the Edge – top 5
agreed
Easily, it’s insane to leave this out of their Top 40 (did they really have 40 songs worth talking about?).I’d have “Janie’s Got a Gun” in the Top 5 too.
Do you get a nickel every time you type “backbeat”?
Ok, here’s the game: every time this foole says “blooze”, you drink. We have an ambulance standing by!
He’s got the proto-Trump I’m-hot-for-my-daughter blues!
What’s the penalty for “sassafrass”?
Same as in town, I think.
So glad you put what it takes in the top 5. I have the same top 5 songs but in a different order. Dream On maybe my #1 song in general ever.
First, as a commenter in my mid-40s, thank you for specifically writing this article for me and my kind. Second, no serious disagreements overall, except possibly the lack of “Living on the Edge” anywhere in here – surely space in the low 30s could have been made. It was prominent enough to be their song with Weird Al treatment, for heaven’s sake! I also think I fully agree with the top three, although in almost any order, and personally I’d probably have to give Dream On the edge for #1, since it’s just more musically interesting than Walk This Way (although yeah, Walk This Way is probably overall their most famous, even if that’s arguably more due to the very famous later collaboration).Third, maybe it’s just my shared view that Tyler is such a famous diva that I have always assumed he’s probably pansexual, but I’ve always thought that the bridge in “Dude Looks Like a Lady” is him saying that after the understandable moment of surprise, he decided to go with it.
I’d argue Walk this Way is far better known because of the Run DMC sample /collab and their appearance in the video. That song probably saved the band’s career, they’d been in rough shape for a while at that point.
Weird Al did “Livin’ On The Edge”? What was it, “Livin’ With A Wedgie”?
Livin In The Fridge!
nice.
Somehow recently there is this upswing of Aerosmith Hate out of seemingly nowhere. They were and are fine and still actually a rock band. Are people pissed they were not hair band or death metal enough? I do not get it. I saw them 2 times in concert. Once in the mid 80’s and it was not great and then again in the early 90s and it was fantastic.
I remember seeing the music video for “The Other Side” repeatedly and unavoidably on MTV, and I thought their shows must be a ton of fun.
I think a lot of it has to do with the resurfacing of Steven Tyler’s highly inappropriate relationships with minors in his younger days. For me they also lost some of their “cool” over the years when they brought in outside writers so they could have big radio hits. Steven Tyler being a judge or host on one of the music competition shows also didn’t sit too well with me.
It might be easier to count the 70’s rock stars who didn’t have inappropriate relationships than to complain about the ones who did.
This is (probably) sadly true, but I think you could drop the 70’s qualifier from your statement and still be accurate. As someone who pretty much breathes rock music, I choose to remain willfully ignorant of most of them. The general public continues to do it with Michael Jackson’s music, so why not?
Instead, lets call out all the men who acted this way instead of pretending its normal and excusable. Also, there’s a big difference between some of those scandal’s what Tyler convincing a teen girls mother to make him her guardian so he can better travel across state lines with her to have sex with her.
So no “death of the author” here?
I don’t quite get that. I suppose it makes sense because a dead person will no longer benefit financially, but does that mean it will be okay to watch the Cosby Show again after Bill Cosby dies?
It can mean separating the art from the creator. If we dig in the past of every artist then we would have to rid our selves of nearly all art because almost no artist would be considered perfect by today’s standards and even artists today will fail under future standards. Something like some day people will never listening to Taylor Swift again because she was not a vegan in 2023. Great Renaissance painters and sculptures were sometimes creeps, do we destroy their works today? I talked to an art historian about this and your benchmark was what they suggested. When the artist cannot financially benefit then we can enjoy that art again. Kind of like enjoying the harry potter books you own but not buying new stuff from JKR.
JKR is awful but doesn’t sexually assault minors then bribes their mom into making them her guardian.I think the manosphere’s “but but both sides” is absolutely self-serving and 100% wrong. I may not like James Woods, JKR or Clint Eastwood’s politics, but that’s entirely different than being a sexual predator.
Problem being, when the people who collect and publicly enjoy the work of art from pedophiles and creeps and Nazis, but primarily do it for that reason. The artist committing the sin or breaking the law is the reason why they choose it. Then it doesn’t matter what a professional historian says. And this “sin or ideology first” ethos is prevalent today. Look at that ginger dildo “folk singer” who was a fad on Twitter a week or two ago.
If a rich collector has a Hugo Boss Nazi uniform, or a Hitler original watercolor painting, pretty sure they aren’t aesthetes first. Maybe if we impose contemporaneous consequences on the transgressor, who just so happens to make art people like, then the example will be set to not do the fucking transgression. It’s a strategy that works, especially when the society isn’t sick that it rewards filth like Steven Tyler, Ted Nugent, Trump, and countless other admitted abusers.
Sorry, but Tyler is a scumbag: Holcomb alleges that she met Tyler (who would’ve been 25 at the time of their meeting) just after her 16th birthday when Aerosmith played a concert in Portland, Oregon, in 1973. Tyler, according to the suit, took Holcomb back to his hotel room, where they discussed Holcomb’s age. After he allegedly asked why she was out all night by herself, Tyler and Holcomb talked about her troubles at home. He then “performed various acts of criminal sexual conduct upon” her before sending her home in a taxi the next morning, the lawsuit states.Tyler also allegedly bought Holcomb her own plane ticket to his next Aerosmith show in Seattle since she was a minor and could not legally travel with him across state lines, the suit says. After the Seattle show, Tyler allegedly performed more sexual acts on her, and Holcomb flew back to Portland the next morning.By 1974, as the suit alleges, Tyler convinced Holcomb’s mother to allow him to become her guardian, which would allow him to more easily travel with her without criminal prosecution — a timeline that matches Tyler’s own comments from his 2011 memoir.
Can we agree their 80s and 90s hits are mostly insipid? Bangers, perhaps, but just awful. Their 70s work is preferable by a mile.
There’s basically no reason for this list to go past the ‘70s.
Their 70s stuff is largely forgettable pap.
Just came here to say the R.E.M. version of “Toys in the Attic” is awesome. They just power through it with reckless abandon (well, except for Bill, whose drumming always kept them from being totally reckless in the early years. This is a good thing) and sound like they’re having a blast doing it. One of my faves on Dead Letter Office.
I’ve always been partial to Zero Boys’ version.
As a kid who was a hack drummer, Train Kept A Rolling was my favorite song to perform (alongside Crazy Train). Anyway, bfred’s authoritative top baker’s dozen:1. Let the Music Do the Talking2. Toys in the Attic3. Dream On4. Walk this Way5. Sweet Emotion6. Mama Kin7. Lightning Strikes 8. Chip Away at the Stone9. Draw the Line10. The Other Side11. Kings and Queens12. Permanent Vacation (come at me!)13. Young Lust
As a mid-40’s dad this is catnip to me. Aerosmith was my first musical love when I was maybe 14. I don’t listen to them at all anymore, but there was a 10-year period where I basically told everyone how amazing they are even though no one asked. I echo some other folks on here that it’s a fucking travesty that Livin’ on the Edge isn’t on this list. I will also say that Don’t want to miss a thing is Aerosmith’s Kokomo and should be regarded as such. Personal fave for me was an MTV Unplugged version of Hangman’s Jury. I wore my VHS copy out. Sweet Emotion should be #1 on this list. That is all.
Their best song is easily “Dream On” and this perfomance for MTV’s 1oth anniversary is just amazing.
Eponymous debut, Toys in the Attic, and Rocks is all you need.
I would add Live! Bootleg, but yeah
you’re fuckin’ beautiful, g’night!
Except Get Your Wings is their best album and it’s not remotely close?
Eponymous debut thru Done With Mirrors and skip to Pump for me.
My friend says “There is no Aerosmith album after Rock In A Hard Place. It’s a (mostly) friendly long-running argument we have.
Wow, no mention of One Way Street? One of their best inho.
Draw the Line, love the guitar and vocals in that song.
https://sofa-king-cool-magazine.com/steven-tyler-once-had-a-14-year-old-girlfriend-that-her-parents-signed-over-to-him/this Aerosmith?
Where the hell is “AmazaCrazyCryin”?!!?
On some list of shitty songs
I think you mean, CrazyAmazingCrying.
Where does Steven Tyler’s statutory rape fall in this top 40 list?
I’m sorry to say I didn’t see Young Lust on there …
Uncle Salty told me . . . didn’t he tell you?
I don’t care for a lot of Aersosmith, but I do really enjoy Last Child.
Why???
Sorry, you must be looking for The Byrds top 40 slideshow…
Everything up to and including Rocks is worth your time. Everything else blows.
Aerosmith sucks
To paraphrase Cusack it’s not wrong to state a preference but Big Ten Inch Record? Janie’s Got a Gun in the top ten? Good lord.Sick As a Dog/Nobody’s FaultSweet EmotionDraw the LineMama KinDream OnLord of the ThighsRound and RoundChip Away the StoneToys in the AtticDarkness
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There needs to be more Ahsoka coverage so I’m just gonna share Ahsoka thoughts on the main article. The guy who play Baylan is dead IRL??? Whoa Health Ledger vibes.
Side eyes old facts here denying the stranglehold Ahsoka has on anyone under 30. Oh hey a random advertisement for young women idolizing her. Whaddya know. Too bad nobody likes Ahsoka eh other old as fuck commenters.
All the commenter plus Barsanti doing the coverage, are being a bunch of gatekeepers about Ahsoka. Just yield to the fact that Star Wars is prioritizing prequel fans right now. Also go fuck yourselves. Star Wars doesn’t fucking belong to you.
“Pink” is terrible. It is a really witless attempt by Tyler to be David Lee Roth. It is to Aerosmith what “Poundcake” was to Van Hagar, just a really witless attempt to be funny that instead just ended up gross and creepy. Steven Tyler should be embarrassed, if he was capable of it. At least David Lee Roth was funny.
Chip Away At The Stone definitely should’ve been on the list. I’d also include Milkcow Blues tho it was never a “hit.” Glad to see Train Kept a’Rollin made the cut. Most of those “newer” ones I’ve never even heard “of’, let alone listened to…
Kramer might not be on this tour, but I’m still kinda amazed that they’re all alive, 5 for 5.
Saw them in 1993 and I don’t know whose fault this was, Tyler was cartwheeling all over the place, everybody on stage appeared to be doing their part, but the volume was turned way down. I turned to my brother and said “Does this seem really low-volume to you?” and some guy said “Hey I’m trying to hear the band!”
Livin On the Edge is better than all the ballads on that album.Kings and Queens and The Other Side are really underrated.
i think dude looks like a lady is heavily underrated in the ranking, its easily top 10, if not 5.