1973Released
4:26

Did You Know?

Interesting facts and trivia about Dream On. By Songfacts®.

This was the first single Aerosmith released. Their manager had them share a house and concentrate on writing songs for their first album. Steven Tyler had been working on the song on and off for about six years, writing it in bits and pieces. He was able to complete it with the help of the rest of the band. A breakthrough came when Tyler bought an RMI keyboard with money he found in a suitcase outside of where the band was staying. The "suitcase incident" became part of Aerosmith lore, as Tyler didn't tell his bandmates that he took the money, and when gangsters came looking for it, he continued to play dumb.

Tyler's father was a classically trained musician, and when Steven was 3 years old, he would lie underneath the piano and listen to his dad play. In his book, Does The Noise In My Head Bother You?, Tyler writes, "That's where I got that 'Dream On' chordage."

Regarding the meaning of this song, Tyler explained: "It's about the hunger to be somebody: Dream until your dreams come true." He added, "This song sums up the s--t you put up with when you're in a new band. Most of the critics panned our first album, and said we were ripping off the Stones. That's a good barometer of my anger at the press, which I still have. 'Dream On' came of me playing the piano when I was about 17 or 18, and I didn't know anything about writing a song. It was just this little sonnet that I started playing one day. I never thought that it would end up being a real song."

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Song Analysis

Key, BPM (tempo) and time signature of Dream On.
C♯Key
MajorMode
4/4Time Signature
161BPM

Album

The album Dream On is released on.

Released By

The record label that has released Dream On.
Columbia
(P) 1973 Columbia Records, a division of Sony Music Entertainment

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