Songoftheday 8/11/22 - You got your mama's style, but you're yesterday's child to me...

 

 

"Jaded" - Aerosmith

from the album Just Push Play (2001)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #7 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 17

 

Today's song comes from veteran blues-rock band Aerosmith, who resurrected their career for the second time in the autumn of 1998 thanks for the # hit schmaltzy ballad from the movie Armageddon "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing".  Later that year the band released a double-disc live set, A Little South Of Sanity, which went to #12 on the Billboard 200 sales tally and sold over a million copies. The set went along with their extensive concert tour which took them all the way into the new millennium. In 2000, they contributed a song to the soundtrack for the reboot of Charlie's Angels in the movies. The result, "Angel's Eye", went to #4 on Billboard magazine's Mainstream Rock radio chart, but it was way too loud to have mainstream pop radio pay it any mind. (Personally I think that was the intention to erase the pigeonholing of "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing" could've produced.)

 

As the band got inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in March of 2001, they released their thirteenth studio album Just Push Play. The lead single from the set was more sedate than "Angel's Eye" but still hard enough for rock stations, "Jaded". Written by lead singer Steven Tyler with co-producer Marti Frederiksen, the song supposedly is inspired by daughter actess Liv Tyler, and how he was mostly missing from her childhood because of touring incessantly.  It clouds into a possible description of a faded lover, but the simple lyrics, name-checking a number of their previous songs, are more of a backdrop for the familiar guitar of Joe Perry and that sound they do so well (almost as predictable as AC/DC) though it sounded like someone turned on the "Cure filter" at times. Nevertheless, the combo of the Hall of Fame nod and Columbia Records push gave the group their last big pop radio hit. For the music video, Mila Kunis (future star of That 70's Show and Family Guy) portrays the world-weary girl...

"Jaded" became Aerosmith's eighth top ten hit on Billboard's Hot 100, and final top-40 placing, in April of 2001. The song spent five weeks at #1 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart, while climbing to #6 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format as well as the Mainstream Top-40 list. Internationally, the single reached the top-40 in Canada (#6), Italy (#11), hte United Kingdom (#13), Spain (#18), and Switzerland (#30). The Just Push Play album, released in March of that year, spent one week at #2 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, going on to sell over a million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 2002, "Jaded" was nominated for two categories, losing Best Duo/Group Rock with Vocal Performance to U2 for their "Elevation", as well as Best Rock Song, which went to Train's "Drops Of Jupiter". The Just Push Play album was up for Best Rock Album, which U2 took home for All That You Can't Leave Behind. 

The second song promoted to rock radio was title track "Just Push Play", which reached #10 on the Mainstream Rock chart, as well as #38 at Mainstream Top-40 radio, but missed the Hot 100 altogether. That was followed by the requisite power-ballad "Fly Away From Here", which also missed the Hot 100, "bubbling under" the list at #103, while peaking at #24 at Mainstream Top-40 radio and #36 on the Adult Top-40 format. The music video, featuring future Mrs. Timberlake Jessica Biel, was nominated for a Grammy for Best Short Form Video, losing to Fatboy Slim's "Weapon Of Choice". The following year, the band rested on their laurels with the compilation Oh Yeah! Ultimate Aerosmith Hits, which went to #4 on the Billboard 200 (their highest-charting hits set) and sold over three million copies. A new song from the collection, "Girls Of Summer", climbed to #25 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart. It was nominated for a Grammy for Best Duo/Group Rock Performance, which went to Coldplay's "In My Place".

When Aerosmith returned in 2004, they released a basic blues album Honkin' On Bobo instead of a big brash rock affair. While a remake of Big Joe Williams' "Baby Please Don't Go" went to #7 on the Mainstream Rock radio chart, the set was treated as a vanity side project by radio programmers. The record went to #5 on the Billboard 200, but sold just over a half million copies. Then came a live album Rockin' The Joint (#24) and another compilation Devil's Got A Brand New Disguise (#33), neither which did much to further their music path (save for a new song on the hits set "Devil's Got A New Disguise" which hit #15 on Mainstream Rock). 

The band started to get into a rut, relying on a heavy touring schedule fraught with injuries, health troubles, and down right fights within themselves, most prominently with Tyler and lead guitarist Joe Perry. Tyler, who joined the judging panel on American Idol in 2009, released a solo single, "(It) Feels So Good", a toss-off from Just Push Play that nevertheless made the Hot 100 top-40 (it'll be featured on down the line in this series).  Instead of finishing a new album, they lingered on the road, with three more repackages of their material getting shoveled out to the public in 2011. Finally, in 2012, Music From Another Dimension! arrived, but by that time, even though the set came in at #5 on the Billboard 200, it spent just nine weeks on the chart, and was their first studio release to not even go gold (500,000 copies sold). Two songs from the record made the Mainstream Rock radio chart, with "Legendary Child" (a tie-in with the New England Patriots football team) hitting #17 and "Lover Alot" stopping at #31, while another cut, "What Could Have Been Love", went to #22 on the Adult Top-40 format and #28 at Adult Contemporary radio. So far, these songs were the band's most recent radio hits, not surprisingly since Dimension is their last album as yet.

Since then, the band has pursued their own endeavors, with Steven Tyler releasing a solo country music album in 2015, while Joe Perry had a couple of charting albums with side-band Hollywood Vampires. But they know what side their bread is buttered, and have toured as Aerosmith off and on all this time, most recently with a stint in Vegas, ending in another rehab stint for Tyler. Who knows, another album may surface one of these days.

(6/10)

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

Aerosmith performed "Jaded" at the American Music Awards in 2001...

Next up, in concert in 2004...

and lastly, Tyler performing "Jaded" at an intimate gig in 2013 with Marti Frederiksen...

Up tomorrow: Stan gives this British songstress a kickstart, and she's grateful.