Nine Lives (1997)
1.Nine Lives
2.Falling in Love (Is Hard on the Knees)
3.Hole in My Soul
4.Taste of India
5.Full Circle
6.Something Gotta Give
7.Ain't That a Bitch
8.The Farm
9.Crash
10.Kiss Your Past Goodbye
11.Pink
12.Attitude Adjustment
13.Nine Lives
From the outset, Nine Lives was destined to bear the weight of expectation—and conflict. With a headline-grabbing $40 million deal from Columbia Records, Aerosmith found themselves in the peculiar position of launching a new era while still wrapping up obligations to their old label. Already veterans, their return was accompanied not by the carefree swagger of youth, but by the fractured uncertainty of a band feeling the strain of its own legacy.
Recording began under dark clouds. Rumors of internal dissent and a relapse into old habits circulated, and the band’s longtime producer, Glenn Ballard, was shown the door. Even after overcoming those creative obstacles, controversy greeted the final product. The original album art was pulled and repackaged after offending members of the Hindu community—a symbolic misstep that echoed the album’s larger identity crisis.
Musically, Nine Lives walks a tightrope between bravado and fatigue. Where Get a Grip had polished edges and radio-friendly gloss, this follow-up tries to roughen its exterior—scratching back at the commercial image with snarling riffs and sleazier themes. But what might once have felt dangerous now comes across as strangely performative. The adolescent bravado that once fit the band’s image now feels like a costume worn too late into the party. Steven Tyler’s Oz-inspired antics on The Farm illustrate the confusion—attempts at humor that land more as strained performance than self-aware satire.
Still, the album is not without its merits. Hole in My Soul, their requisite power ballad, delivers the kind of melancholy grandeur Aerosmith made their own in the '90s. Elsewhere, moments like Pink and Attitude Adjustment offer flashes of creative risk-taking—evidence that the old spark hadn’t fully dimmed. But too often, the tracks feel like they’ve been assembled from a kit of past glories. Fallen Angels, the eight-minute closer, aspires to seriousness with a message about missing children, yet overstays its welcome. What could have been poignant turns ponderous.
Nine Lives captures a band in transition—perhaps too late to recapture the raw energy of their youth, and not yet ready to fully embrace their role as elder statesmen of rock. The album’s inconsistencies are the sound of a group straining against their own legend, trying to outrun a shadow that may no longer be behind them, but above them.