How This Ranking Works
Every fan has a list, and every list is wrong to somebody. Mine is built on forty years of wearing these records out, from a beat-up copy of Get Your Wings as a kid to the vinyl reissues I buy now as a grown man with a mortgage. I ranked these on three things: how good the song is, how deep it actually sits in the catalog, and how fast I would defend it at a cookout if somebody called it filler. Filler is a word people use for songs they have not listened to twice. These are not filler.
Number Five: "Seasons of Wither" (Get Your Wings, 1974)
Steven Tyler wrote this one, and it might be the most beautiful thing the band ever recorded. It opens quiet, almost like a lullaby, and then it blooms into this slow, heavy, aching thing. Radio wanted "Same Old Song and Dance," and that is a fine song, but "Seasons of Wither" is the one that sounds like New England winter feels. It is the sound of a young band that was supposed to be a Stones knockoff proving it had its own soul. If a new fan asked me where the depth is in early Aerosmith, I would not say a word. I would just put this on.
Number Four: "Round and Round" (Toys in the Attic, 1975)
Toys in the Attic is the album everybody owns, so people assume there is nothing left to discover on it. Then "Round and Round" shows up near the end like a brick through a window. It is one of the heaviest things they ever cut — a grinding, mean riff that Brad Whitford helped write, played like the band was trying to break their own equipment. This is the song I play when somebody tells me Aerosmith was a pop band. Pop bands do not sound like this. This sounds like five guys in a rehearsal space trying to outplay the room.
Number Three: "Nobody's Fault" (Rocks, 1976)
Rocks is my favorite Aerosmith record, full stop, and "Nobody's Fault" is the heaviest track on it. The drums sound like a building coming down in sections. The riff is pure menace. Guitar players who came after this band — guys in bands a lot heavier than Aerosmith ever tried to be — point at Rocks as a blueprint, and this track is a big reason why. It never got near a radio station. It did not need to. It lives in the record collections of people who actually play, and it will outlive every hit the band ever had in the ears of the people who matter most to me: other fans who know.
Number Two: "Kings and Queens" (Draw the Line, 1977)
By 1977 the band was running on fumes and everybody knew it, which makes "Kings and Queens" even more remarkable. It is a big, dramatic, medieval fever dream of a song — the closest Aerosmith ever got to progressive rock without losing the swagger. Draw the Line is a messy record made by a band coming apart, and sitting in the middle of the mess is this ambitious, strange, gorgeous track. I love it partly because it should not exist. A band that far gone had no business attempting something this big, and they pulled it off anyway. There is a life lesson in there I think about at work more than I expected to.
Number One: "Let the Music Do the Talking" (Done with Mirrors, 1985)
Here is my cookout fight, and I will die on this hill. Joe Perry wrote this song and recorded it with his solo band, The Joe Perry Project, in 1980 while he was out of Aerosmith. When the original lineup got back together, they re-recorded it as the opener of Done with Mirrors in 1985, and the Aerosmith version is a freight train. The reunited band sounds hungry on it — five guys with something to prove, playing like the comeback depended on the first thirty seconds. Everybody talks about Permanent Vacation as the comeback. The comeback started here, on an album most people skipped, with a borrowed song that the whole band claimed like they had written it together in a garage. That is the most Aerosmith story there is.
Why Deep Cuts Are the Whole Point
Hits are the front door of a band. Deep cuts are the house. I run my work life the same way, honestly. The demo gets the meeting. The unglamorous follow-up work — the stuff nobody claps for — is what keeps a client for ten years. Aerosmith made some of the biggest radio songs in rock history, and I still reach past them for the tracks in this list, because this is where the band was not trying to please anybody. They were just playing. If you only know the hits, you have homework, and it is the best kind: five songs, one evening, volume up.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between a deep cut and a hit?
A hit got released as a single and played on the radio. A deep cut is an album track that was never pushed that way, so only fans who bought the records know it. Plenty of deep cuts are as good as the hits — they just never got the push.
Which album has the most songs on this list?
Rocks, Toys in the Attic, and Get Your Wings each contributed one, with Draw the Line and Done with Mirrors rounding it out. The 1974 to 1976 run is the heart of it. That three-album stretch is why fans my age will not shut up about this band.
I only know the hits. Where do I start?
Start with Rocks, front to back, the way it was meant to be heard. Then Get Your Wings. Do not make a playlist, do not skip around. These records were built as albums, and the deep cuts make more sense in the order the band put them in.
Why is "Dream On" not on this list?
Because it is not a deep cut and never has been. It was a hit twice, a decade apart. This list is for the songs that never got that shot. "Dream On" is doing fine without my help.
