Top 5/Bottom 5: The Rolling Stones
If you’re anything like me, you love to listen to, talk about, and even argue about music. In that spirit I’ve decided to embark on a little project. Each week I’ll be listing my top 5 and bottom 5 songs from an artist or band that I love, or at least like. Disagree? Let me know, that’s half the fun.
Considered by many to be the world’s greatest rock and roll band, the Rolling Stones have now been making music for over 50 years. That makes their vast catalogue an ideal one to pick through and select highlights and lowlights.
Top 5:
● “Satisfaction”: Yes, I know we’ve all heard it too many times, and yes, I know there are many (including Keith Richards) who argue that Otis Redding’s version is actually superior, and they may be right. But this is just about a perfect pop/rock song, with its propulsive groove, that classic stupid simple riff, and its great petulant, bratty rock and roll lyrics dissing and dismissing everything from “some girl” to “the man… on the radio” hawking the latest products for instant happiness and fulfillment. Maybe the most important song in establishing the Stones as a group with its own attitude and sound–what we might now call its own “brand.” Classic for a reason.
● “Wild Horses”: For me it’s just about a tossup between this and “Can’t Always Get What You Want” for greatest Stones ballad, but I give the edge to “Horses” because it feels a little more specific and a little more real to me. Though I always liked it, this was a song that truly meant something to me once I had actually experienced heartbreak a couple times, and no matter how many times I hear it, it still works. It’s also a great arrangement–I love the way the drums just disappear for entire verses and come back in on the choruses, and the lead guitar and the 12 string rhythm are so beautiful and restrained, perfect illustrations of the Stones’ just-enough musicianship approach.
● “Beast of Burden”: The greatest soul tune in the Stones’ oeuvre in my opinion. A great guitar intro, a great mid-tempo groove, and lyrics that walk the line between self-doubt and seduction. From what myself and many others consider the last truly great Stones album, 1978’s Some Girls.
● “Tumbling Dice”: It’s all about the groove. No song better exemplifies what I’d call the middle-period Stones, the time when in my opinion they went from being a very good rock and roll band to being a band that had its own complete signature sound. This kind of mid-tempo rock groove, with the classic Keith Richards/Charlie Watts push/pull interplay is what really sets the Stones of Let It Bleed through It’s Only Rock and Roll apart, and it’s the most easily identified sound in bands obviously inspired by the Stones. No matter how many bands attempt it (the Black Crowes come to mind), it just can’t quite be matched. One of the greatest songs on what many, including that similarly named publication Rolling Stone, consider the greatest Rolling Stones album, Exile on Main Street.
● “Gimme Shelter”: Another one of the greatest mid-period Stones songs, this one for me is all about the production. I’ve heard plenty of live versions of this, along with plenty of covers, and for me none come close to matching the Let it Bleed studio version’s grandeur and menace. The lyric demands big music, and the studio version delivers it. Where most live versions are too fast, the tempo of the album version is perfect to convey the gathering storms, both actual and psychological, depicted in the lyrics. The sometimes swampy. sometimes stinging guitar sounds; the almost operatic backing vocals; the howling harmonica; the thundering piano, all add to a glorious rock and roll mass.
Bottom 5:
● “Angie”: “Angie/Aaaaann-jay”–I consider this the other side of the “Wild Horses” coin. Is it about David Bowie’s then-wife Angela? Is it about Anita Pallenberg? Is it about Keith Richards’s daughter? Who cares? What it is is a saccharine ballad with some drippy strings and piano, and Mick Jagger overly enunciating every syllable for effect. It’s also possible that my negative opinion of the song was reinforced by the junkie who used to come in to the Guitar Center near Union Square in New York where I worked, who would sit on a stool, play the beginning of the song, start singing to himself and almost invariably nod off. You and me both, buddy.
● “Start Me Up”: Ok, I’ll admit this one seems a little too easy to hate. Maybe I don’t actually hate it, but it’s so ubiquitous as to be borderline annoying almost every time I hear it. It’s a good guitar riff that in my opinion doesn’t quite measure up to Keith’s greatest. Something about the song just gives me ‘80s rock beer commercial vibes, even if its most famous commercial use was actually for Microsoft.
● “Anybody Seen My Baby”: This song just sucks. A weak attempt to use some of the mid-‘90s electronic dance production techniques that were so in vogue, and were much better utilized by artists like David Bowie. (Bowie of course produced some blatant Stones pastiches in the ‘70s.) And sure, you could list any number of the Stones songs from the mid-‘80s on as among their weaker songs, but some of them are actually pretty fun if you don’t listen too closely. Not this one. Amusingly, Keith Richards recounts in his autobiography that Mick Jagger accidentally stole part of the melody from a KD Lang song, and the band subsequently had to give her partial songwriting credit. A dubious honor in this case, but no doubt financially rewarding.
● “Have You Seen Your Mother Baby?”: What the hell is this song? Glad you asked. It is a psychedelic relic of anti-authority nonsense. On the other hand if this were a Pretty Things song it would be one of the best things they ever did. What an overrated music dork band they were.
● “It’s All Over Now”: Just kidding, this song rules.