"Dream On" (Aerosmith, 1973)

YouTube link.

 

Sing with me, sing for the year

Sing for the laughter, sing for the tears

Sing with me, if it's just for today

Maybe tomorrow, the good lord will take you away...

Full lyrics.

In a 2011 interview, Steven Tyler reminisced about his father, a Juilliard-trained musician, and recalled "lying beneath his dad's piano as a three-year-old, listening to him play classical music. That's where I got that Dream On chordage," he said.

Reposted from 2011 because the originally embedded video had undergone linkrot.  So I'll use this opportunity to embed the original musci video and append some additional info.

Dream On has been classified as a "power ballad." q.v.:

A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French chanson balladée or ballade, which were originally "danced songs''... Sentimental ballads, also known as pop ballads, rock ballads or power ballads, are an emotional style of music that often deal with romantic and intimate relationships, and to a lesser extent, war (protest songs), loneliness, death, drug abuse, politics and religion, usually in a poignant but solemn manner... Aaron argues that the power ballad broke into the mainstream of American consciousness in 1976 as FM radio gave a new lease of life to earlier songs such as Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" (1971), Aerosmith's "Dream On" (1973), and Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" (1974).

For those who like me have wondered how Steven Tyler's voice held up over the years, here's his performance over 40 years later of a slightly-more concise version:

YouTube link.

Pretty damn good.  And so TIL there is a Nobel Peace Prize Concert.