The Inflection Point

Alright let’s wrap this up. After going through pretty much their entire discography, reading Keith Richard’s autobiography, learning WAY too much about Mick Jagger, Anita Pallenberg, and the absurd, outlandish, almost unbelievable, trailblazing ways of the Rolling Stones, I’m finally ready to nail down their top 5 songs.

It’s not an easy task. For my money’s worth – it’s the best band of all-time, and second is a long horizon away. So below I’m going to wrap up what I’m calling my Stones Era (2023 – 2025). In taking a little different approach, I’ve stayed away (mostly) from ranking the ubiquitous hits. You won’t see (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, Paint It Black, Gimme Shelter, Sympathy For The Devil, Start Me Up, or some of the other career defining hits here. Not that these aren’t great songs, I mean they’re literally all-time classics for a reason, but below are five that I think are genuinely impeccable songs, and if I’m going to be honest, take away the number of sales and streams, and these five may just be better than those five above. So let’s roll this stone to it’s final resting place.

5. Neighbours – Tattoo You (1981)

WHO SAYS THE STONES DIDN’T MAKE GOOD MUSIC PAST THE 70’S?! I mean besides Start Me Up, the lead single and intro to perhaps the last great Stones album – a once reggae demo made by Keith Richards high as a kite in Jamaica in 1973 when recording Goat Head’s Soup, this is the trump card for any Stones song past the 70’s. Jagger taps into his primative cool here (see what I did there?) and delivers a spagtastic few verses, yet the chorus coming in with a melody is perhaps the highlight of this thing, a 15 second levitation and release

“IS IT ANY WONDER – THAT WE FUSS AND FIGHT”

Oh wait, no, actually it’s the motherfucking stunning saxophone solo and it’s presence throughout this thing played by none other than jazz legend Sonny Rollins. Yeah, the Stones casually got perhaps the best sax player of the time to come in and do a few songs for this album. It’s in a way a great high point for the Chicago Blues Band from the East London. Somehow, in all the partying, tabloids, hits, and infighting, it gets lost that the Stones were utterly consumed with blues music, and were absolutely some of the best musicians around. Watts was originally a classical jazz drummer, Richards played with Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry, while Jagger was a renaissance man of his time.

“Ladies, have I got crazies?

Screamin’ young babies, no peace and no quiet

I got neighbours, Saxophones playin’

Groanin’ and strainin’ with the trouble and strife”

Yeah this one will make you nod your head. I respected the British “neighbours” here too

4. Miss You – Some Girls (1978)

With Richards fully consumed by an absolutely crippling heroin addiction in the mid-70’s, the Stones went through quite a lull in album quality after their masterpiece Exiles on Main Street in ‘72 – headed by Richards. Goat Head’s Soup (‘73) and Black & Blue (‘76) were both fine albums, Soup being the better one here, but with Richards, the driving force and backbone of the band’s rhythm section, and 1/2 of the song writing duo, mostly out of the equation due to his own doing, Jagger was left to start finding his own path. That path was disco, the latest pop culture craze that had taken America society by force. Jagger often spent most of this time at Studio 54, a staple of the 70’s disco scene where his wife Bianca Jagger was a regular. By ‘77, with Richards finally sober (not really) but back in the band activities after a brief hiatus, he was sickened by where Mick had drove the band and was wanting to take the next album. Disco and Punk (thanks to the Velvet Underground and the Killers) were all the noise now, and out of all the Stones songs ever made, this one was really a Mick Jagger tune through and through. When Jagger played a demo for Richards, even Keith, who hated the disco and even his writing partner at the time, admitted that it was a jam, and by adding a classic Keef riff on top of that tempo, along with Watt’s drumming, created a genre bending classic. Even Richards would later say about this one “if everyone else were doing it, fuck it, we’ll show them we’re the Stones; if we want to fucking make a punk album, we’ll punk all of ’em”. When Jagger hits the bridge:

“oh what’s the matter, what’s the matter, what’s the matter with you girl?! “

in his playful, almost childish tone, it’s a vibe only Mick Jagger can capture. It’s a five minute song, mostly of Jagger’s ramblings and sight seeing in New York at the time, but it’s the perfect intro to a timeless, return to form, Rolling Stones album. The Stones had conquered the disco scene in one try – and also proved that they were a band that could really do it all.

3. Bitch – Sticky Fingers (1971)

Oh this thing is fucking DIRTY. Just a slimy, gutteral guitar riff from Keef – fully in his prime on this one pumping through and providing the energy into this jam.

“Yeah when you call my name

I salivate like a Pavlov dog”

I don’t think it’s any coincidence this song was titled Bitch with this dirty ass, muddy mix. Bold to name a song Bitch in the early 70’s – but the Stones were trendsetters, and this one lives up to the title. Again – there is a tremendous sax solo after the first verse that any other band could only dream of. It’s proof the Stones at their very core were blues players through and through, and never sacrificed at least their early music for radio plays. They wrote parts specifically with the saxophone in mind, and here it’s a perfect addition. Out of all the songs on this great album, designed and curated by none other than Andy Warhol, this one was snuck in, refusing to conform to the pop culture and shiny artistic stature this album created for the Stones. They became a world renowned band after this one, peaking through the charts to worldwide fame – but they never lost the bluesy plot:

“Yeah when you lay me out

My heart is beating louder than a bass drum

Yeah you got to mix it child,

Yeah you got to fix it

It must be love, it’s a bitch”

2. Beast of Burden – Some Girls (1978)

Yeah I know, it’s probably too well known for this list. But I couldn’t get through a top 5 without spilling all over the page about this one. I was listening to Rick Rubin’s podcast over the Holiday break – he had Chris Martin on and they were discussing out of all the songs ever made, which ones that he had most wished that he had written. I thought about that from my perspective, in that, which songs I would have wished I would have written, being a song simple enough for me to write without a musical background. I landed here – it’s damn near perfect. Unlike most Stones songs, this is a cleaned up sound here, no reverb, sax, dirty guitar riffs, or expounding 5+ minute jams. It’s clean cut, three minutes and thirty seconds, of the best legitimate pop music that the Stone ever created. The riff of course, another Keef classic, simple and polished, not overbearing at all. Perhaps one of the most immediate recognizable sounds, it created a laid back, relaxed ambiance here, allowing Jagger to cut up and improvise, which by the way, was totally NOT A THING, before the Stones. Lyrics were not only quite simple, but they were also purposeful – and the idea of just riffing on lyrics or sounds were not a solid concept until Jagger’s confidence and braggadocios made them be.

It’s a love song; it’s a pop song, and it’s he most beautifully written song the Stones will ever have. It really doesn’t need too much explaining, the chorus:

“I’ll never be your beast of burden,

So let’s go home and draw the curtain

Music on the radio

Come on baby, make sweet love to me”

in that Jagger falsetto, the way he pushes and pulls with each “pretty pretty girl” afterwards, giving each just a slightly different dialect, as if he’s referring to a different girl each time, is a *chef’s kiss*

The back half of the bridge is my favorite Jagger moment of all time, where almost with a renounced sigh he concludes, with some unreal writing

“You can put me out, on the street

You can put me out, with no shoes on my feet

You can put me out, put me out,

Put me out my misery”

The Stones got sappy. It’s lovely.

1. Rocks Off – Exile on Main Street (1972)

Yes – the legacy of the Stones having some fucking blow your head through the door intros to albums lives long. Sympathy For The Devil, Gimme Shelter, Brown Sugar, Hot Stuff, Start Me Up, Undercover Of The Night, hell even Angry are jaw dropping, electric starts to timeless albums. But it’s here, on the run in Southern France, outlawed from the UK for tax purposes, strung out on a mountain of drugs, where the Glimmer Twins wrote their magnum opus. Jagger opens the proceedings with this wide eyed, paranoid welcoming – revealing his state of mind at the time:

“I hear you talking when I’m on the street

Your mouth don’t move but I can hear you speak”

With the title of the album very much reflecting their status – they were exiles of the highest order, having just released Sticky Fingers in the past six months, and Government’s across the country were dead set on making an example of them for the rising unrest and upheaval of the counter-culture early 70’s movements. They were no longer rock stars, instead they had graduated to something larger – cultural icons, perhaps drug induced gods. They knew wherever they went, all eyes went on them. So they reclused into a villa in the south of France, right on the Mediterranean Sea. Their only contacts were any individuals who could provide them drugs.

“I’m zippin’ through the days at lightning speed

Plug in, flush out, and fire the fucking feed”

When Jagger hits these lines, it comes with a visceral growl, and I’m always laughing about how somehow, the way he says that last line “plug in, flush out, and fire the fucking feed” could immediately relate to today’s youth and reliance on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook feeds at all times. It perfectly sets the mood for what’s to follow – murky, gritty, and disturbingly raw, its strung-out incoherence captures the record’s debauched brilliance with marble-mouthed eloquence.

“The sunshine bores the daylights out of me

Chasing shadows, moonlight mysteries”

Jagger’s confidence on this song is otherworldly. Richard, Taylor, and Watts create a rhythm section I’m not sure three other humans could have conjured. Richards joins in on harmonies – and similar to the above tracks, a huge round of applause has to go to those rousing horns that take the track to a higher level entirely. It’s the Stones operating at their absolute peak. They ran laps and laps musically around the Beatles. They were on another planet, both mentally and physically.

They always will be.