Aerosmith - Get A Grip

My indifference on Aerosmith has been documented on the B Side before. It's really nothing new. But this album came out in the height of my music listening start. In April of 1993, I was certainly a young, impressionable listener. And I do recall my parents buying this cd very shortly after it came out. The album is 7x platinum in the states, so obviously a few other people rushed out and picked it up as well. This ended up being the last album dropped by the band on Geffen, as they moved to Columbia after this release. This album has a couple of crazy cameos in it, which I'm guessing most people didn't have any clue were on here. Don Henley sings backup vocals on 'Amazing' and Lenny Kravitz offers backup on 'Line Up'. Those aren't some small time names there. And for a band that had already seemingly reached legendary status - that's pretty cool. While this is tied for their best selling album in the states, it's the best selling album worldwide - over 20 million copies. So gosh, even my homer-ish opinions have to be wrong on this one. I mean, that's literally a metric ton worth of albums. And it's not like you only heard a song or two off this either. Even if you didn't own the record, there were SEVEN singles dropped from it. That's exactly half the album. Crazy. I guess my question to people who love this, is why? I mean, there is no question it sounds good. No question that you can put it on, drift away for an hour and find your toes tapping. Maybe even singing along with a track or two. But does it have any substance? I don't hear any. It's like bubblegum pop music meets rock n' roll. Lyrical content is zero, production values are none, arrangements are sloppy at best - it's merely a "get me over" fastball when you're already down 3-0 in the count. Aerosmith knew they were leaving Geffen. I don't think they even put a ton into this album. It just so happens to turn out, not trying lead to a ton of poppy guitar anthems that people loved to listen to in the car. Hey, that's never a bad thing.

TRACK LISTING:
1. Intro
2. Eat the Rich
3. Get a Grip
4. Fever
5. Livin' on the Edge
6. Flesh
7. Walk on Down
8. Shut Up and Dance
9. Cryin'
10. Gotta Love It
11. Crazy
12. Line Up
13. Amazing
14. Boogie Man

Listen To Samples

Top 3 Tracks:
1. Crazy
2. Cryin'
3. Amazing

FINAL RATING:
3 out of 5 stars