When a band has made as many albums as The Rolling Stones, they all blend together after a while. Even though the group could have thrown in the towel after making Tattoo You in the 1980s, they would have already made the best classic rock that the world had ever known, taking blues to places it had never been before. While Mick Jagger has had his fair share of favourite songs, he still contests that one Stones album stands above the rest.
After coming out of the 1960s, though, the band began to fracture. With Brian Jones beginning his downward spiral after being pushed out of the writing sessions, Jagger and Keith Richards would go on a songwriting bender for the ages, crafting lush ballads across albums like Between the Buttons while also going back to their dirty side on albums like Sticky Fingers.
Once Mick Taylor was brought into the fold, the band became a seasoned rock and roll machine, with Taylor trading licks with Richards that would turn into iconic tracks like ‘Wild Horses’. As the decade drew to a close, Jagger and Richards had to compete with the likes of disco on the charts.
Approaching the dance genre on their own terms, Some Girls features a streamlined version of The Stones’ usual formula. Outside of the signature Keef guitar licks, songs like ‘Miss You’ benefit from that four-on-the-floor groove and Jagger crooning about how he misses the object of his affection so much.
While the production may be a touch dated in places these days, Jagger still considers the album a personal favourite, later telling Yahoo, “It’s one of my favourite Stones albums, I think, because it’s so listenable as an album, and it gets to the heart of the matter straight away, and there’s no mucking about, and it’s succinct”.
Compared to the few Stones albums that preceded Some Girls, it’s easy to see where Jagger comes from. While albums like Exile on Main St. and It’s Only Rock and Roll may have been beautiful pieces of music, the length of the deep cuts did make the songs feel more flabby than they truly were.
Throwing out the overly indulgent runtimes, Some Girls is one of the more straightforward Stones albums ever put to tape, not wasting any time delivering the hits. Although tracks like ‘Beast of Burden’ and ‘Shattered’ may have been divisive among Rolling Stones fans, the band also tested what worked within their wheelhouse in the deep cuts.
Outside of the expected bluesy side of the group’s sound, songs like ‘Respectable’ took a few cues from the punk scene emerging from New York and London, with Jagger spitting out the lyrics in his best John Lydon voice. Jagger would go on to say that living in New York had a significant influence on the album’s sound as well, blending genres like rap, dance, and punk under one roof with the signature Stones flavour.
Although The Stones may have seemed like elder statesmen of rock and roll, Some Girls showed they were far from running out of ideas. Like the punks before them, Jagger and Richards had started as angry young men, and this album is what those men sound like when they have a few years of experience.
