Songfacts: "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing" was almost a U2 song

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I DON'T WANT TO MISS A THING
Aerosmith
This was featured in the movie Armageddon, which starred Steven Tyler's daughter, Liv Tyler. U2 were originally asked to perform this song for the movie - the idea for Aerosmith performing it only came after Liv was cast.

A grand production featuring a 52-piece orchestra, this was by far Aerosmith's biggest hit on the US Hot 100, and their only chart-topper. It was #1 US for four weeks in September 1998, becoming one of the most popular songs of the year.

The song got a huge bump from its placing in Armageddon, which was the top-grossing film of 1998.

Diane Warren wrote this song, which is about treasuring every moment spent with another person. Some other hit songs Warren wrote include "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" by Starship, "If I Could Turn Back Time" by Cher, "When I See You Smile" by Bad English, and "I'd Lie For You (And That's The Truth)" by Meat Loaf.

Diane Warren found inspiration for this song after hearing about an interview where James Brolin said that when his wife Barbra Streisand was away, he missed her even when he was sleeping. When she set out to write a song for Armageddon, she thought this was a good sentiment to express, since the film deals with the impending destruction of all on Earth.

This song extended Aerosmith's reign as the hottest rock band of the '90s. Their 1993 album Get a Grip contained four hit singles which also did very well on MTV. With a new generation of fans discovering the group's back catalogue, they were as popular as ever, selling out shows worldwide. Their follow-up album, Nine Lives, was a struggle to make and wasn't released until 1997. It was far less popular, with none of its singles cracking the Top 25. Aerosmith could still fill stadiums, but had to come off the road in April 1998 when Steven Tyler tore his ACL in a microphone stand mishap during a show in Anchorage.

The band was on the wane and facing the possibility of empty seats when they resumed their tour at the end of the summer, but this song revived their fortunes. The tour resumed on September 9, when "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing" was the #1 song in America. The album title proved prescient, as once again they became the most popular rockers in the land, still cranking out hits while their contemporaries like The Rolling Stones were forced to lean on their legacies to sell tickets.

The Armageddon soundtrack, bolstered by this song, went to #1 in the US. It contained three other Aerosmith songs: "Sweet Emotion," their cover of "Come Together," and a new song called "What Kind of Love Are You On," which they had recorded for their Nine Lives album but didn't make the cut.

Even this song's writer, Diane Warren, found it a little treacly. She told Performing Songwriter: "Some of the lyrics, like 'I can stay awake just to hear you breathing,' I'd be like, 'No, don't do that. Don't watch me breathe. I won't be able to sleep. Go do something else.' It's so funny, because part of me would never want someone to say that to me, but then again, I write it."

Giving his thoughts on having a cover song become Aerosmith's biggest hit, guitarist Joe Perry explained to Classic Rock magazine in 2002: "At the time, we just didn't have the time to settle down and do it. We were out on the road, so they brought us in to see the movie and said 'here's the song, this is where it fits into the movie, you can do it if you want.' So we were in the studio within the next three days cutting it. And yeah, we do wish that we'd had a little more time, so that we could have had a shot at writing it, but it was perfect timing. The song was great, people loved it, and I don't think people care that much who wrote it."

When Diane Warren wrote this song, she thought someone like Celine Dion would be singing it. She was surprised when the artist turned out to be Aerosmith, but it ended up working out quite well. "I remember being at the Sunset Marquis Hotel, and sitting at the piano with him and teaching him the song and just having chills all over my body as I heard the song come to life with his voice and knowing what it was going to be," she told Performing Songwriter about working with Steven Tyler on the song. "It was an amazing experience. I'd written with Aerosmith before, and they'd never done the songs we wrote."

You'll notice that Steven Tyler is surprisingly stationary in the video. That's because it was shot after his knee injury, and he was wearing an awkward brace that restricted his movement. The video's director Francis Lawrence used a lot of close-up shots to compensate.

Aerosmith performed a snippet of this at the halftime show of the 2001 Super Bowl, before going into "Walk This Way" along with N'Sync, Britney Spears, Mary J. Blige, and Nelly.

This won the 1999 Nickelodeon Teen Choice Award for Love Song of the Year.

In a 2008 survey conducted by the cable music channel Magic TV, this was voted by its UK viewers as the nation's favorite love song.

British heavyweight boxer Tyson Fury celebrated his upset victory on November 28, 2015 over Ukraine's Wladimir Klitschko in Dusseldorf, Germany with some in-ring karaoke. "I promised everybody I'd sing a song after this fight," Fury said. "So this is to my UK fans, my Irish fans, my American fans and my new German fans; and most of all, this is a dedication to me wife." The newly crowned heavyweight champion then proceeded to belt out this song.

Considering he just went 12 rounds, it wasn't a bad rendition. Joe Perry was impressed. "I thought it was great!," he told Vanyaland. "To belt it out like that… talk about being in shape. My hat's off to him; and to sing to his wife… he's a class act!"

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