Fluxblog
July 26th, 2021 3:28pm

The Toss Of The Dice


Aerosmith “What It Takes”

Steven Tyler doesn’t ever come across like a loser in his songs, even when he’s singing from the position of a guy who’s been dumped and can’t figure out how to move on in “What It Takes.” He’s always the cool guy, the sexed-up fun guy, the guy who’s rough around the edges but always has a high status. He’s a rock star and he’s always got a party, and he’s always inviting you to come along. His problem in “What It Takes” is not so much that he’s been dumped but that this happens so rarely to him that he doesn’t even know how to process it. He’s so used to being on the other end of the dynamic that not getting what he wants is somewhat alien to him. This could be kinda gross, but it’s not – the arrangement is rooted in blues but it’s played in a bright major key, and while Tyler sings with feeling he’s also giving us his usual razzle dazzle, so it’s more hammy and theatrical than genuinely melancholy. It’s more like he’s indulging in the idea of sadness than spiraling into actual despair. Maybe it’s supposed to be that thing of “let’s acknowledge this feeling, honor it, and move on.”

“What It Takes” is from Pump, the hugely popular follow-up to Aerosmith’s comeback album Permanent Vacation. That record re-established the band as hitmakers with the help of outside songwriters Jim Vallance and Desmond Child and while the soppy power ballad “Angel” has a touch of desperation to it, the band mostly just sounded like a brighter version of themselves with major late ‘80s studio gloss. Aerosmith fit in well with the hair metal party rockers of that era but the music was more complementary than similar, and the songs on Pump in particular have a high degree of ambition and sophistication that it’s easy to forget when the most memorable bits are just big dumb rock n’ roll. “What It Takes” is exceedingly warm and rich, a gloriously decorated dessert of a song that would have quite good but far less remarkable with a more standard rock arrangement, and possibly very bad with a more maudlin and earnest power ballad arrangement.

“Love In An Elevator” is a good example of studio excess of Pump working in Aerosmith’s favor. It’s a swaggering rock song about fucking on the job that starts with the line “workin’ like a dog for the boss man” and even attempts a winking double entendre on the word “fax.” It’s a song with some sledgehammer hooks, a dirty riff, and a Penthouse Letters lyrical conceit, and you really could just stop right there and you’d probably have a hit. But they just keep upping the ante, piling on harmonies and pushing the song higher until you get to the point where they basically decide to turn this horny himbo anthem into their “A Day In the Life.” It’s musically satisfying but also totally absurd, it makes the joke of the song funnier but also presents Tyler as someone who is horny on like, a cosmic or mythological level. I don’t know if anyone can relate to this or even if it’s necessarily aspirational, it’s more like listening to this is communing with some kind of raunchy godhead.

Buy it from Amazon.

RSS Feed for this post2 Responses.
  1. jonder says:

    But he once said he was a high school loser who never made it with a lady til the boys told him something he’d missed!

  2. Dan says:

    Coincidentally, “Love in an Elevator” has been stuck in my head for several days now despite not having listened to it in God knows how many years. I can even see millisecond fragments of the video in my mind’s eye, like remembering a past life.


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