10 Rock Songs That Don't Sound Like The Artists Who Made Them
9. I Don't Want To Miss A Thing - Aerosmith
To a certain generation of listeners, I Don't Want to Miss a Thing is Aerosmith through and through, but probably also the only Aerosmith they know.
Typically a hard rock act, Aerosmith found success with big, bawdy tracks like Dream On and Walk This Way, while they stretched suggestively out across the rock genres, incorporating glam, blues and metal into their provocative act. Penning their name on the global consciousness, the band has survived half a century (so far), underpinned by singer Steven Tyler's iconic extreme upper-register vocals, guitarist Joe Perry's luscious solos and an all-round magnetic stage presence.
Put together for Michael Bay's faux-classic oil-drillers-in-space actioner Armageddon (1998), in which Tyler's own daughter Liv stars, I Don't Want to Miss a Thing seems to operate on a different plane to the band's other work. A big, sloppy love ballad with grandiose, orchestral stylings, and a piano and strings leading the instrumentation throughout, it features a fairly standard vocal from Tyler with few of his usual quirks, and a bland performance from Joe Perry who could, quite frankly, have been replaced by anyone. And apparently the band don't even like it themselves.
But, hey, a paycheque is a paycheque... Right?