10 Best Hard Rock Ballads

As the British Invasion slowly started to invade the American airwaves, many bands emerged from the shadows with their own twist on bluesy rock and roll. When the band started, Aerosmith was the mirror-image of the British rockers, with songs that took the blues of old and injected it with a shuffling Americana boogie. The groove was hardly the only string to the band's bow though.

Being trained in classical music, frontman Steven Tyler decided to brush off a song that he had started writing when he was teenager when it came time to record tracks for the band's debut. With complex musical left turns, "Dream On" was something that no one had heard before in the pop sphere. Capped off with an ethereal Tyler vocal performance, this song would go on to be chanted in stadiums for years to come.

While being quite radical for the time, "Dream On" quickly fell into obscurity when it was first released. Holding true to the song's power, the band re-released the record after they hit their stride with the album Toys in the Attic, which led to the song reaching the Top 10. Even if the world wasn't ready for it, Aerosmith took sophisticated melodic structures and made the prototype for the power ballad.