Aerosmith’s last album was four years earlier in 1997 with Nine Lives. Between then and 2001, they kept in the public eye. In 1998, they released a live album called ‘A Little South of Sanity’ and the massive single “I Don’t Want to Miss A Thing” from the Armageddon Soundtrack. Then in 1999, they got their own roller coaster at Disney’s Hollywood Studio’s called Rock n’ Roller Coaster starring Aerosmith. Then in January 2001, they were co-headliners for the XXXV Super Bowl with ‘Nsync. The timing was impeccable as their new album would be released several weeks later on March 5, 2001 titled ‘Just Push Play’.
The band was still in tact with Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, Brad Whitford, Tom Hamilton and Joey Kramer. However, when recording, the band was not together. They recorded their parts separately with producers Mark Hudson and Marti Frederiksen along with Steven and Joe. As a result, this album is Joe Perry’s least favorite…he has been quoted as saying this album taught him “how not to record an Aerosmith album”. Pretty harsh!! And not far from the truth. This is not an album that sounds like classic Aerosmith. It is not rough around the edges. It is polished, over-produced and sounds like a pop album. It is all rainbow and unicorns and not what you want from Aerosmith. Yes, it went Platinum, but this was the beginning of the end of commercial success for the band. Diehard fans were not happy and the younger new fans were too stupid to and brainwashed by bad radio to know this isn’t Aerosmith.
We are now in the 2000’s so the cover art is trying to be all futuristic with the girl robot which was designed by Hajime Sorayama who designed the robot to resemble Marilyn Monroe. My copy was even more interesting. I bought this used and when I got home and opened it up, it also had an extra CD included. No, it isn’t listed on the cover that there is one. It was there by mistake. It was a copy of ‘Nine Lives’ which I already have on CD. Now I have a spare.
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