For his first solo album, Aerosmith's Steven Tyler went out and made a country record. But here's the kicker: It's apparently—against all odds—pretty darn good. “I’m looking forward to hopefully being accepted into the community of country,” Tyler tells the Arizona Republic. “I know it’s a tight gang to get into. But...I think I hit on some magic.” Here's what people are saying about some of that magic found on We're All Somebody From Somewhere, which most admit seemed like a terrible idea on paper:
- The album "seems worrisome" but is actually "remarkably consistent, even organic," the Boston Globe reports. "Tyler, who co-wrote all of the album’s strongest material, proves a solid storyteller with a gift for melody.”
- Instead of a “frivolous exercise by a past-his-prime, attention-seeking celebrity,” listeners get an album “worthy of serious appraisal," according to Slant Magazine.
- The AP notes that despite immediate references to bullets, whiskey, and Jesus, only one song on We're All Somebody From Somewhere comes across as "corny bro-country banalities."
- “I’ve got to tell you that I am more than just a little pleased with the result. Hell, let me say this. I am outright impressed," says Sounds Like Nashville's Chuck Dauphin, who initially wrote the album off as a "marketing ploy."
- The Boston Herald reports We're All Somebody From Somewhere has "strong stuff on it." A number of tracks have a “raw, cool, and strange but magnetic Americana approach that’s been missing from Aerosmith for a few decades.”
- But there's always an exception that proves the rule. The album is "tolerably listenable," but “whatever country is these days, it is not Steven Tyler," according to the Irish Times.
Watch Tyler perform one of his country songs
here. (More
Steven Tyler stories.)
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