Andy Greene of Rolling Stone reports:
Aerosmith started a tour in Bulgaria last week that will take them throughout Europe and North America over the next four months, but don’t expect to hear another new album anytime soon. “Our contract to Sony is fulfilled and we’re free agents right now,” guitarist Joe Perry tells Rolling Stone. “We’re trying to figure out what that means. I don’t even know if making new albums makes sense anymore. Maybe we’ll just release an EP every six months. I don’t know what the future looks like.”
Part of the group’s reluctance to commit to a new album comes from the tepid response to their 2012 LP Music From Another Dimension!, which was their first collection of original songs in over a decade. It debuted at #5 on the charts before disappearing without a trace. None of the four singles even scraped the Billboard Hot 100. “I’m obviously disappointed it didn’t work out the way it was supposed to,” says Perry. “But on the other hand, once a record is out, it’s out forever. Maybe in two years someone might hear a song off it and go, ‘What was that song? It should have been on the radio.’ And it might hit a wave again.”
Read more at Rolling Stone.
source: rollingstone.com
37 Responses
Coming from a DIFFERENT “Brian”…..I AGREE!! But, I’m biased…..KISS rules!!
If future albums would be as horrendous as the last one, not making more is probably a pretty good idea.
Really liked the album. Was only (cant stop loving you), with carrie underwood was not my type of music, and the other ballad (closer).
I haven’t heard the latest album, so I can’t comment on it, but I fully agree they’ve been way too “pop” for a long time now. Forget about writing “hits” or trying to fit in with the flavor of the moment in pop music. Save the country duets and half dozen sappy ballads for solo albums – or better yet just do them as guest appearances on somebody else’s album. I don’t buy Aerosmith albums anymore because I know I’m not going to like at least half of it. Several years ago when a certain file sharing service hadn’t been shut down yet, I listened to some of the Aerosmith albums that came after Permanent Vacation that I had only heard the radio tracks from. What I found was other songs that rocked pretty hard and were more than decent, but you never hear them. So, I cherry picked the best of them and put together my own modern Aerosmith CD. A band like Aerosmith is cruising on their own legend now, there isn’t going to be another multi-platinum album (and very few rock bands seem to achieve that today), they aren’t going to have #1 mainstream radio songs (because the majority of the “mainstream” want’s Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, and One Direction), and they aren’t going to out-draw Bon Jovi on a stadium tour. And guess what? REAL FANS DON’T CARE!!! We just want you to crank up the amps, kill the drum kit and play kick ass rock music! Please, just BE A ROCK BAND! I have the same problem with Def Leppard, stop it with the girlie rock (no offense to the ladies who like “real” rock) and just let it rip please!
When I first heard bands saying they were considering doing EPs more frequently instead of full albums, I didn’t like the idea. I like having a 10-14 song collection released all at once. But I’m starting to reconsider that opinion. Especially for older bands, we’re getting new material like every 5 years or longer apart. Maybe it puts less pressure on them if they only need to come up with 3-5 really good tracks instead of a dozen, and we’ll hear from them more often. EPs are cheaper than full albums, so maybe people will buy the whole EP instead of just 1 track they hear on the radio, and weirdly enough maybe it will actually help sales.
Sadly, the best music Aerosmith created was when they were junkies. Like many other highly-successful bands that cleaned up and made a BOATLOAD of money, they are in a different place with less reason to create great music.
They will never write another doing like “Dream On” again. Which is something they should be striving for if they really cared anymore.