O Yeah! Ultimate Aerosmith Hits (2CD)

This collection isn't necessarily terrible, it's just a bit insulting to fans. Apparently, either the band, its record labels, or both believe that all we care about is the insipid formulaic drek that Aerosmith has been making ever since "Get a Grip". That stuff takes up half of "Ultimate Aerosmith", while the their best material--from the '70's--is packed into the first ten songs of disc one. I guess the band members don't realize that their early music is what made them popular--and what makes them (almost) tolerable today. (Could a band possibly start out as a bunch of wrinkled ex-(?)coke fiends and sell millions of CDs to kids 35 years their junior?)

And even the picks from the 1970s are a bit odd. I'm very pleased to see "Seasons of Wither", but should it be picked over "Kings and Queens", "Train Kept a-Rolin'" (which is an Aerosmith classic, despite being a cover), or even "Chip Away at the Stone"? And what is "Big Ten Inch Record" doing here? This song is an amusing throwaway that fits well into "Toys in the Attic", but it does not belong on a compilation that claims to be definitive.

Moving on to the 1980's, there are no songs from "Done With Mirrors" (I believe that the "Young Lust" compilation icluded a few of those, however). At the least, "Let the Music Do the Talking" should be here. Surely the removal of by-the-numbers ballads like "Crazy" (which sounds almost the same as "Crying", just not quite as good) and the boring "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" could have made room for some of the songs mentioned above.

For anyone who doesn't own any Aerosmith, this is not the place to start. Get "Greatest Hits" and "Gems" to cover the Columbia years, or go for "Pandora's Box" if you're really interested in that era ("Box of Fire" for the ultra-motivated fans). And for those of us who want a thorough compilation covering the Geffen years of the 1980s and 1990s, the double-disc "Young Lust" (released a whopping 7 months, 21 days before this one) does a better job. Come to think of it, so does the single CD "Big Ones". True, if you get the aforementioned albums instead of this one, you won't get songs from their last two CDs or "Girls of Summer", but that's what online music swapping is for.