Do you know the indignant reaction of Pina and Miss Silvani when faced with the miraculous catch of Fantozzi and Filini on the shores of the “earthly paradise” to which Franchino took them? Here, this was more or less the reaction of the rock/hard/metal community to the news of the collaboration between Aerosmith and Yungblud. Even before the release of the first single, many branded the operation as disgustingly commercial, almost a scandal, a sell-out of legacy of the Boston band in favor of those who are perceived as a product more for TikTok than for some infamous club. Club which, however, it must be said, even Toxic Twins Steven Tyler and Joe Perry haven't frequented for decades. Social media has been filled with the worst insults imaginable and there are those who have even taken it out on poor Ozzy Osbourne, guilty of having spoken of Yungblud as the new standard-bearer of a certain imagination.
After the performance at the last MTV Video Music Awards, which saw Aerosmith and Yungblud together, Dan Hawkins of the Darkness did not mince his words, calling the show real shit, “another nail in the coffin of rock'n'roll”. Brother Justin then explained that «it's rock'n'roll, but not as we know it. There's a sort of Disney veneer on it, as if it were rock'n'roll seen through an Instagram filter.” If the history of rock has taught us anything, however, it is that certain artistic marriages raise eyebrows today and become cult tomorrow. Aerosmith knows something about this: their partnership with Run-DMC in the mid-80s was greeted as blasphemy, heresy for both worlds, yet that version of Walk This Way today it is a rock and rap monument and has changed the rules of the game forever.
Returning to the initial Fantozzian image and net of personal tastes (“In any case, I really like fried ratfish”), what are the five songs like One More Time? Preconceptions have turned into premonitions. The EP is saturated with digital production, the effect on the voices is so omnipresent that Tyler's (certainly retouched) high-pitched one ends up sounding parodic, while Yungblud's seems to become Tyler's. Perhaps an unconscious ploy to validate the theory of the handover between old and new teen idols? It's a shame because live, right at Ozzy's touching farewell to the stage, the two had represented the biggest surprises. Not to mention the fact that this is the first recording under the name Aerosmith since the unfortunate era Music from Another Dimension! dated 2012 and that Tyler announced his retirement due to vocal cord problems. So, expectations were quite high. Unfortunately, the immense joy of hearing him sing again doesn't last long in a work so plastic that you wonder if anyone actually played it. To be honest, even in Ozzy's last albums it was clear that the voice was supported by technology, but everything else was very well played and, above all, the songs were good, often excellent. Here it is precisely the songwriting that cannot bear the weight of so much hype.
It hurts my heart to say it, but if Aerosmith really had nine lives, this one, which unfortunately began way back when Just Push Playis the one where they no longer know how to write songs and where they no longer find authors capable of doing so (something they have always excelled at). My Only Angel it's pandering, with a decidedly Aerosmith chorus, but it's damn repetitive. I don't make it a question of paraculagginess, the group has been paraculonic for decades, but before the songs, both the ballads and the high voltage ones, were cool, now they tire you after a couple of minutes. The clearest example is perhaps Wild Womanwhich also starts off well with its somewhat Stones-like gait and then transforms into a sort of Wanted Dead or Alive by Bon Jovi, spread with pop-rock from playlists for style rock gyms. The duet that on paper could promise intergenerational flashes is often reduced to a competition of who can blend in best in the other's sound universe, without ever hitting the target or inventing something new.
The central part of Problems it's the first thing that made me jump, with that almost early Guns feel, therefore decidedly old Aerosmith, which however is preceded and followed by decidedly flat verses. Together with the semi-ballad A Thousand Daysdefinitely in focus and the only clue as to what this collaboration could have been, remain the only flashes in the night. If they had added the acoustic version of My Only Angel with Steve Martin on banjo, perhaps we could have hoped to hear a real album after this EP. Too bad that version is not in the tracklist, but was only released as an alternative to the original accompanied by a studio video.
The compromise of Aerosmith and Yungblud does not shake either the history of rock or the habits of new listeners. Legends that are born by chance or amidst a thousand controversies become immortal only when they manage to ring true, out of time and fashion. This, however, is a missed opportunity, where the worst of the initial fears has come true. Paradoxically, the issue is closed by the exaggeratedly enthusiastic comments under each song uploaded to YouTube. Maybe they are right and the stragglers have definitively lost.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
