Band:	Aerosmith
Album:	Just Push Play
Style:	Hard rock, Blues rock
Release date:	March 2001

01. Beyond Beautiful
02. Just Push Play
03. Jaded
04. Fly Away From Here
05. Trip Hoppin'
06. Sunshine
07. Under My Skin
08. Luv Lies
09. Outta Your Head
10. Drop Dead Gorgeous
11. Light Inside
12. Avant Garden

The modern day sirens trying to entice you in with calls to just push play, resist the urge!

With a career revival that far exceeded the success of their initial run, I am convinced Aerosmith made some form of Faustian bargain: that one day they must release a pop record, and thus Just Push Play was the result of the band paying their dues. Ever since the band hit it big with Permanent Vacation, they had flirted with pop elements and sounds to big success, with each subsequent album leaning more on the pop side than the rock side. Nine Lives had come close to overstepping the boundary but had managed to stop short; Just Push Play, however, sails past with only the distant echo of Tyler's effect-drenched vocals remaining in your head as they ride off into the horizon.

The band had been threatening to go over the top ever since the turn of the 90's; Get A Grip/i] was the start of a slippery slope that saw Aerosmith turn from rockers to pop rockers, though given the success they achieved, it's not hard to see why they continued further down this path, eventually culminating in [i]Just Push Play. It is a record that sounds like it was formed from suggestions from focus groups, a schizophrenic collection of ideas designed to appeal to different audiences and their tastes with scant regard for whom is supposed to make these ideas real.

Tracks like "Just Push Play" and "Outta Your Head" sound like the band had walked into a nightclub in the late 90's and decided the sea of ravers was an audience they had yet to crack; trying to sound hip and relevant, the band ditch their self-respect and go all in?though they don't. At the same time, the band hedge their bets and have several soft rock songs (often rubbing shoulders with the more techno songs in the track listing) to appeal to an audience who want an easy listening experience. "Sunshine", "Avant Garden" and "Fly Away From Here" are more in vein with what you would associate with the band, but even then there is something (that I can't put my finger on) about them that doesn't feel like an Aerosmith song.

Add into this sense of not feeling like themselves are the band themselves; whether it's the style and structure of the songs but Tyler aside, none of the band are able to showcase any feel of personality into the tracks. They feel like session musicians on their own album. No one puts in a bad performance, but no one sounds like a key component in the songs either; if you replaced Tyler you could slap the name of a different band name on the album and I doubt many would say "oh, this sounds like an Aerosmith clone", it is that devoid of character.

The worst part of this album is that there are elements that could have worked had they not been pushed through the pop filter to try and fit the aesthetic they were aiming for with this release. Scattered across these songs are ideas that could have been so much better had the band used the, in a more natural environment. Most of the time it is the chorus that seems out of place, ending up as the high spot of the song whilst feeling like it could have worked better with a song built around it. Choruses like "Beyond Beautiful", "Outta Your Head" and "Light Inside" are really wasted in the songs they are placed in. Add to this, occasional riffs like "Trip Hoppin'" and "Under My Skin" sound like much better songs could have been made out of them, wasted potential in the form they have here. The duo of Perry and Whitford are reduced to having a few bright moments rather than solid tracks.

It is these choruses that form some of the highlights of the album, they're great choruses but test your endurance to get to them. The only full classic on this album is "Jaded", seeing all these different elements coalesce with the band's natural talent to form a solid pop rock song that deserves its place in set lists to this day. Had the rest of the album been up to this standard, it would have easily overshadowed the prior decades' work.

For me, Just Push Play is the worst release from the band, even more so than the oft pillared Rock In A Hard Place. While I can tolerate the latter and occasionally play it, the former is an album I have yet to be able to listen to in full in one sitting owing to my tolerance threshold not being high enough. Listen for curiosity's sake and for some great choruses, but I wouldn't get the album, what with "Jaded" being a regular feature on greatest hits collections by the band.