Songoftheday 9/23/20 - You say that we will but there ain't no guarantees, I'm major in love but in all minor keys...

 

 

"Falling In Love (Is Hard On The Knees)" - Aerosmith

from the album Nine Lives (1997)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #35 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 4

 

Today's song of the day comes from the Boston hard rock band Aerosmith, whose 1993 album Get A Grip solidified their amazing "comeback", scoring four top-40 pop hits with "Cryin'", "Amazing", and two Grammy winners with "Crazy" and "Livin' On The Edge".  The band capped off their tenure with Geffen Records in 1994 with a track on the Beavis and Butthead companion album, "Deuces Are Wild", which topped the Mainstream Rock radio chart for four weeks, followed by a hits compilation, Big Ones, that produced another rock radio hit with "Blind Man" (#3 MR) which nearly made the pop top-40 at #48 at the close of the year. 

After taking a break, the band finally returned to start the contract they signed with Columbia back in 1991 with Nine Lives. The lead single from the set continued their streak of provocatively-titled first releases with "Falling In Love (Is Hard On The Knees)". Written by the band's Steven Tyler and Joe Perry with Glen Ballard, who was originally set to produce the album but was replaced by Kevin Shirley, the track featured a no-holds-barred (and probably way over-budget) music video to get MTV back on board...

"Falling In Love" landed another massive rock radio hit for the group, topping Billboard magazine's Mainstream Rock format list for five weeks and spending a half of a year (26 weeks) on the list. However, surprisingly, and maybe due to their absence, the song's reception at mainstream pop radio was more muted. Although they did rack up another top-40 hit there, it lingered for a month in the bottom quarter of that tier in April of 1997. Internationally, the single was a bit more successful, topping the Spanish singles chart for two (non-consecutive) weeks, spending a month at #2 in Canada, and reaching the top ten in the Czech Republic (#4), Finland (#7), and Hungary (#8). It also made the top-40 in Poland (#11), Iceland (#21), the UK (#22), Switzerland (#22), Sweden (#23), Austria (#35), and Germany (#40). The Nine Lives album topped the Billboard 200 sales list for a week, going on to sell over two million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 1998, "Falling In Love" granted Aerosmith their fifth nomination for Best Rock Duo/Group Performance, losing out to the Wallflowers for "One Headlight", while Nine Lives got them their first Rock Album nod, which went to John Fogerty's Blue Moon Swamp set that year. 

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"Falling In Love" was unusually remixed into a dance track. Although they had reached the Billboard Dance Club Play before with "Dude (Looks Like A Lady)", that was more of a straight-ahead rock treatment, as opposed to mixes by Moby and this "Butcher Mix", which made me buy the vinyl 12" for...

Next up, the band performing the song live on TV in 1997...

...and in concert in Germany later that year...

and finally, fast forward to a show in Costa Rica in 2010...

Up tomorrow: British Marxist one-man act sings about love in various forms.