Madness To Creation’s A-Z Throwback Reviews: Featuring Aerosmith’s 1993 Release “Get A Grip”

Commercially, Aerosmith’s 1993 release “Get A Grip” was their most successful album in their history.  It would sell over 20 million copies worldwide, sell over seven million copies in the United States alone, win two Grammy awards in 1993 and 1994 for the songs “Livin’ On The Edge” and “Cryin'” for Best Hard Rock Performance, and would bring about early stardom for Liv Tyler and Alicia Silverstone in their series of music videos for “Crazy” and “Cryin'”.  Don Henley would also sing backup for the song “Amazing” and Lenny Kravitz would sing backup for the song “Line Up”.

In 1993, Aerosmith would continue to set the world on fire by writing commercially successful songs in their two previous albums “Permanent Vacation” and “Pump”, however we would see more of a return to blues in “Get A Grip”.  Some have argued that a lot of these songs were based upon their road to sobriety and there is that somber feeling in some of the songs.  We would see a similar return in the “Intro” where it sounds similar to Run DMC’s take of “Walk This Way”, and it breaks into some tribal drumming and a bit of return to classic rock form in “Eat The Rich”, although the chorus structure is quite similar to “Love In An Elevator”.

From a lyrical standpoint, Aerosmith would end up getting a bit political in a few of their tracks.  In “Eat The Rich”, Aerosmith would take shots at rich people that forget their roots and how they make music for the working man(or woman) and not for these rich executive labels, although they were signed to a major label in Geffen Records.  In “Livin’ On The Edge”, the song was interpreted to be about the story of Nero fiddling while the city of Rome was burning, and some have interpreted the song to be about the lack of concern that American society has about the environment.

Aerosmith returned to a mix of pop/rock and blues in “Crazy” and “Cryin'”, which the aforementioned songs would be the two biggest hits in Aerosmith’s career and their music videos would catapult the careers of Liv Tyler and Alicia Silverstone, not only for the acting job that they did in the music videos but for their supermodel looks.  There were also hints of blues in the last album of the track entitled “Boogie Man” and in “Amazing”, which includes a stunning guitar outro by Joe Perry that allows fans to unpack another layer of Aerosmith.

Overall, the album, although was a huge commercial hit, is more recognized for the singles “Crazy”, “Cryin'”, “Amazing”, and “Livin’ On The Edge”, however it’s not recognized as a classic album as a whole if that makes sense.  I felt that Aerosmith could’ve done more here and there and everywhere on the album, it’s like you know that they’re good at what they do and are supremely talented, yet they don’t show off that talent.  The album to me, lacks pizzazz and charisma.  “Amazing” and “Eat The Rich” were the only two cuts that I could really get into.  Madness To Creation rates this a paltry 4 out of 10 stars.  Here is the track listing below.

1.  Intro
2.  Eat The Rich
3.  Get A Grip
4.  Fever
5.  Livin’ On The Edge
6.  Flesh
7.  Walk On Down
8.  Shut Up And Dance
9.  Cryin’
10.  Gotta Love It
11.  Crazy
12.  Line Up
13.  Can’t Stop Messin’
14.  Amazing
15.  Boogie Man