Songoftheday 2/19/16 - Old tin lizzy do it till you're dizzy, give it all ya got until you're put out of your misery...

"Rag Doll" - Aerosmith
from the album Permanent Vacation (1987)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #17 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 8

Today's song of the day comes from the Boston hard rock group Aerosmith, who made a comeback in the late 80s after lead singer Steven Tyler and guitarist Joe Perry's guest appearance on Run DMC's top-10 pop remake of their "Walk This Way". The band's next album, Permanent Vacation, landed them their first top-20 pop hit in over ten years with the novelty rocker "Dude (Looks Like A Lady)", while the second single from the album, the power-ballad "Angel", went all the way to #3. Their third pop radio release from the set was "Rag Doll", written by Perry and Tyler along with 'song doctors' Jim Vallance and Holly Knight. A mid-tempo strutter with a hint of New Orleans blues rock bounce, the song was one in a long line of stripper pole-ready rock songs of the end of the decade...

"Rag Doll" became the third top-40 pop hit in America from Permanent Vacation in August of 1988, while climbing to #12 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart. Across the pond in the UK the single just missed the top-40 at #42, but it was the biggest hit of the album over there and up to that time their highest-charting single. Internationally, "Rag Doll" was the band's first top-40 hit in the Netherlands at #16, and it hit the top-40 in Ireland (#29) and Canada (#23), and was a minor hit in Australia at #73.

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Here's Aerosmith performing "Rag Doll" live at Woodstock '94...

...and again from a show in 2013...

up tomorrow: A reggae son looks to the future.