Tuesday, October 26, 2010
HE'S NOT HOT FOR YOU (3X): In his (paywalled) review of Keith Richards' memoir, the New Yorker's David Remnick asserts that "The Stones have not written a song of consequence in thirty years." Really? "Thru and Thru," anyone? (And did Remnick specify "written" as opposed to "performed" to excuse his love for "Harlem Shuffle" and its douchetastic video?)
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"Start Me Up" was 1981. "Love Is Strong" (1994) was an OK song and had a memorable David Fincher video with the 50 foot high Rolling Stones wandering around. "Anybody Seen My Baby" is noteworthy for the (apparently unintentional) lift from "Constant Craving," and is credited to Jagger/Richards/lang.
ReplyDeleteI think that Remnick specified "written" as opposed to "released" because everything on Tattoo You -- including "Start Me Up" and "Waiting on a Friend," the last two Stones songs I would consider "significant" -- were written earlier. The whole album was comprised of songs written either for Emotional Rescue or for Some Girls (or for both), I can't remember, but they were not songs written in 1980 or 1981.
ReplyDeleteWith that caveat, I'm completely 100% on board with Remnick's statement. One could argue about "Undercover of the Night," but that was more ubiquitous than significant. By the time the Stones released Steel Wheels, the albums were less artistic statements than marketing tools for gigantic nostalgia tours. If you date Tattoo You to when it was written, not when it was released, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a person alive whose favorite Stones song, or anything in, what, the top 20? 50? -- belongs to the last 30 years.
That was me.
ReplyDeleteHere's Wiki on the provenance of Tattoo You: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tattoo_You. I guess some of it dated back further than I thought -- "Waiting on a Friend" is actually an outtake (largely) from Goat's Head Soup in 1972. Anyway, it supports what I said -- Tattoo You was released in 1981, but it was written long before (other than two not-consequential songs).
ReplyDeleteWhat makes a song "of consequence?" Does it have to be a hit, does it have to be critically acclaimed, or yes? I liked most of A Bigger Bang, particularly "Laugh, I Nearly Died" and "This Place Is Empty," even though the latter involves Keith Richards asking a woman to bare her breasts, which makes me involuntarily shudder. But I guess songs don't get to be of consequence just because some chick in Pittsburgh likes 'em.
ReplyDeleteAll songs about baring one's breasts are significant. "You Can Leave Your Hat On," "It's Getting Hot In Here," "Pour Some Sugar on Me," "Naked, If We Want To." I can't think of a single insignificant song about baring one's breasts.
ReplyDeleteI'm totally jumping TPE's cue here, but what about Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Put Em On The Glass"?
ReplyDeleteLet's be honest--isn't there pretty much an entire sub-genre of hair metal devoted to songs about baring one's breasts?
ReplyDeleteTop 50? Maybe Thru and Thru, maybe Mick's Demotion, not One Hit To The Body.
ReplyDeleteI feel like I accidentally wandered into the wrong thread.
ReplyDeleteHere's a proposed top 53 (I couldn't limit it to 50) most significant Stones songs, and yes, it would include every Stones-written song from Let it Bleed and Sticky Fingers and almost every one from Exile, but there's no way to pare those down at all based on significance:
ReplyDeleteBeast of Burden
Bitch
Brown Sugar
Can't You Hear Me Knocking
Casino Boogie
Cocksucker Blues
Country Honk
Dance Little Sister
Dead Flowers
Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)
Emotional Rescue
Fool to Cry
Get off of my Cloud
Gimme Shelter
Hang Fire
Happy
Honky Tonk Women
I Got the Blues
It's Only Rock 'n' Roll
Let it Bleed
Let it Loose
Let's Spend the Night Together
Live with Me
Midnight Rambler
Miss You
Monkey Man
Moonlight Mile
Mother's Little Helper
No Expectations
Rip this Joint
Rocks Off
Ruby Tuesday
Satisfaction
Shattered
She's So Cold
Shine a Light
Sister Morphine
Some Girls
Start me Up
Street Fighting Man
Sway
Sweet Black Angel
Sweet Virginia
Sympathy for the Devil
Torn and Frayed
Tumbling Dice
Turd on the Run
Under my Thumb
Ventilator Blues
Waiting on a Friend
Wild HOrses
You Can't Always Get What you Want
You Got the Silver
And that doesn't count "Love in Vain," "Time is on my Side," and "Little Red Rooster," all of which would have made the list, as Stones songs because they weren't written by the Stones. Can you really find four songs on that list that should be cut so that you can put "Thru and Thru" -- which seems as trifling a Stones song as Voodoo Lounge is a trifling Stones album -- on the list?
Blame Robin, not me.
ReplyDeleteWith all due respect to Robin, blaming her is not as much fun as blaming you, Isaac.
ReplyDelete