Lindsay Eanet on Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” (from Armageddon - The Album, 1998)
(iTunes, Rdio, Spotify)
In the United Kingdom, where I spent most of 2011 mired in academia and damp weather, there are a lot of channels solely dedicated to playing music videos. Some solely do Top 40, others club music, others vintage garage rock. One of these channels, Magic, would play a “Magic at the Movies” series in the wee hours. And like the moon and the tides, we could count on the appearance of “I Don’t Want To Miss a Thing” in the rotation at always the right moment in the conversation. The chatter would slow and skid to a halt, take a sharp left and drive straight into a Steven Tyler-penned lake of schmaltz and power chords. There was almost a tangible joy about it, especially at the last “I don’t wanna faaaaaaaaaaaall asleeeeeeeeep,” pounded home with our best hair-metal panther-screams. The ritual started as a parody of itself, an experiment in tackiness, but it gradually grew into something else. I don’t know if the love for this ritual was self-aware or embarrassed or borne out of nostalgia and not the song itself, but whatever it was, I think we started to love the song, or at least the act around it, for real.
“I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” is the perfect song for this purpose, too, because of just how over-the top it is. It diffuses the tension in the room, in your own mind, the anxieties that come with leaving or trying to figure out exactly what to say to everyone in the room before you have to go home and sort your adult life out. You give into silliness. You let go and laugh and give a bravado performance instead of just sitting there dreading the end. You start to love the song more than you’d prefer to admit.
When we’re done with the last rendition, there are Lambrini bottles all over the floor and everyone is a little bit flushed and my throat feels raw from trying too hard and I look around the room and know in a month I will have to leave Liverpool and whatever this amazing thing is, and we will go through the formalities, wish each other well, promise to visit, to stay in touch, that’s what Facebook and Skype are for. But lives happen, jobs happen, people relocate and get married. Names get shuffled, lost. And sometimes that song will come on some rock radio station and I’ll practice the chorus in the hopes of a next time.
Lindsay Eanet lives and writes in Chicago and sometimes actively participates in karaoke nights, although she prefers the Cranberries and Pat Benatar to Aerosmith. She blogs irregularly here.
