Top 10 Rolling Stones Singles
- The Top1012
- Anne Watkins’s version
- Your version
×(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
After rising to fame as a covers band with a powerful sound, the Rolling Stones had only been writing their own material for a year or two when they came up with 1965’s Satisfaction, now widely regarded as one of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll songs ever. The song instantly distinguished the Stones from all the warm and fluffy British bands of the era. Not to denigrate the Beatles or any other great 60s bands, but the Rolling Stones did more than any other band to define their era through music, and Satisfaction was their first big statement.
×Paint It Black
While the Beatles were dropping joyful little ditties like Yellow Submarine, Michelle, and Good Day Sunshine, the Stones were exploring the dark depths of the human psyche and writing disturbing songs about, well, whatever Paint It, Black is about—seemingly a guy morning a dead girlfriend, although other interpretations are possible.
×Lady Jane
Lady Jane showed that the Jagger/Richards songwriting duo didn’t have to rely on hard guitar riffs and thundering drums to be powerful. This quiet and delicate song features haunting instrumentation and a sweet lyric delivered with vulnerability and a slight tinge of humor. The meaning is hard to parse, but the Stones were just entering their psychedelic era at this point, and their songs were becoming a little more ambiguous—which to me makes them more interesting.
×Ruby Tuesday
The Stones liked to portray a tough exterior when it came to love and sex, but deep down they were just a bunch of softies prone to doting over the women in their lives. This wistful song, about a free-spirited young woman who doesn’t want to be chained down, defined a whole generation of young people who just wanted to chase after a better world, no matter what the cost.
×She’s a Rainbow
The Stones’ psychedelic era, defined by the album Their Satanic Majesties Request, is usually given short shrift by rock historians, but I’m particularly fond of it. There are tons of great unheralded songs off that album (my favorite being the lyrically evocative “2000 Man”), but the main single, She’s a Rainbow, is one of the most beautifully orchestrated pieces of the mid-60s era.
×Jumpin’ Jack Flash
Over the first half of 1968, the Stones set aside their psychedelic hijinks and, picking up on dark real-world developments, got dangerous again. Jumpin’ Jack Flash was recorded during the Beggar’s Banquet sessions, and it was a powerful preview of that great album—all fire, social turbulence, and hard blues.
×Street Fighting Man
Street Fighting Man took the hard-driving, dangerous sound of Jumpin’ Jack Flash to a new level and raised the stakes with lyrics that do more than just allude to the political turmoil of the late 60s. It’s one of those Stones songs that somehow sounds like its time, and it makes the tame offerings from their contemporaries sound childish by comparison.
×You Can’t Always Get What You Want
I can never tell if the choral opening is supposed to be ironic, but in any case, it sets an appropriately dramatic tone for this emotional song about disappointment and resignation. The lyrics to the verses are a bit obtuse and mysterious, but the song nevertheless manages to sound like the end of an era, which is appropriate considering that it came out right at the end of the 60s.
×Brown Sugar
With the Sticky Fingers album, the Stones started to come out of their dark, apocalyptic period. To me, this isn’t such a great thing, as their apocalyptic stuff is their best, but I can understand why they wouldn’t want to stay in that state of mind for more than a couple of albums. Of course, the lyrics to Brown Sugar are on the depraved side, but they’re clearly having fun with it.
×Wild Horses
This is one of those songs where the chorus is so great that it’s hard to even remember how the verse goes. But it’s not the Stones’ fault that they had pure gold for a chorus. And if you listen closely, there’s actually a lot of beautiful guitar playing throughout this song, and Jagger’s vocal delivery is unusually sweet and vulnerable.
