Songfacts®:

• Guitarist Joe Perry wrote this song at his Boneyard Studio in Boston with a funkier groove than the straight-ahead rocker it would later become. He recalled to Rolling Stone that he brought it to the band when album sessions began in Los Angeles, and said, "Let's do it double-time and make it rock."
• Since he wrote the song, Perry wanted to sing it himself, but Steven Tyler kept telling him how much he liked the lyrics and that he wanted to do the vocals. In the end, Tyler did the lead and Perry sang backup. In our interview with Joe Perry, he said that it was his wife Billie who convinced him. "My wife said, 'Hey, if he wants to sing it, let him sing it. If he loves the lyrics that much, let him go for it," he said.
• Fans first heard the song during Aerosmith's summer 2012 Global Warming Tour on which this one of the few new tunes previewed by the band. Guitarist Brad Whitford told Classic Rock Revisited: "We do one new song called 'Oh Yeah' and we have a lot of fun playing that song. It is a song that has a good old fashioned Joe Perry rock riff and those are always a lot of fun to play. We included that song to sort of test the waters and people are liking it. It translates really well live because it is straight ahead rock."
• 2011 American Idol runner-up Lauren Alaina supplies background vocals. She said of recording with one of the talent show's judges to The Boot: "I got to go in the studio with Aerosmith, and that's fine with me! Who can say that? It's neat to say Steven Tyler's my friend; I'm lucky."