The Essential Aerosmith

Considering Aerosmith’s long and varied career, it’s a herculean task assembling all their best moments in one place. With only ten tracks from their first decade of activity featured, The Essential leaves plenty of early material to investigate. Picking up Get Your Wings, Toys In the Attic and Rocks are a safe bet. This set was originally released in 2002 as O, Yeah! Ultimate Aerosmith Hits. It contains several tunes remixed – “Draw The Line,” “Pink,” “Just Push Play” – the duet with Run-DMC of “Walk This Way” (and the original version) and two then new tracks, “Girls of Summer” and “Lay It Down.” “Mama Kin,” “Dream On,” “Sweet Emotion” and “Back In the Saddle” are the obvious crowd-pleasers from the first go-round, while “Dude (Looks Like a Lady),” “Janie’s Got a Gun,” “Cryin’,” “Crazy” and “Jaded” highlight their ‘80s-through-the-‘00s comeback. The group’s insistence on playing hard, heavy and catchy hard rock singled them out from the competition. Having a phenomenal lead singer in Steven Tyler didn’t hurt either.