Pitchfork’s “The Best Rolling Stones Songs That Don’t Really Sound Like the Rolling Stones” (a poll)

"Winter" is a beautifully wasted song, and the gem of the post-Exile, pre-Some Girls slump.

btw there is an “article” that accompanies this list but i don’t think it’s worth linking to and, in any case, the best polls here are always weird / arbitrary lists imo

"Shattered” but it feels like I'm cheating.

that’s because it sounds like a rolling stones song

yeah for real

these are actually lyrics from “too much blood”

You know, he took her to his apartment
Cut off her head, put the rest of her body
In the refrigerator, ate her piece by piece
Put her in the refrigerator, put her in the freezer

It’s about that japanese student at the sorbonne who killed his classmate—a news story at the time

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7bwvvx/whos-hungry-502-v16n1

Vice interviewed him once because of course

maybe it's personal bias but i think "i'd much rather be with the boys" sounds much better sung from a female perspective (pace donna lynn's "i'd much rather be with the girls"). i also really like "some things just stick in your mind", written for dick and dee dee.

"we love you" is just a great song. i like ryuichi sakamoto's version with robert wyatt and brian wilson on vocals, but i also really like the original. i get "not a rolling stones song" but jagger has one of those voices that always sounds sarcastic even when he's not, which is excellent, as opposed to wyatt and wilson who always sound sad (i think sakamoto actually got wyatt for the song because sakamoto thought he had the saddest voice in the world).

i've never really listened to much stones post '60s so i can't comment on the rest.

Winter is the best of these but it sounds like a Stones song.

Gonna listen to em all today, but Heaven is the only one that really doesn’t feel like a Rolling Stones song in the strictest sense. Plus, it’s a jam.

The real point of the article was just to highlight that the stones were a lot more stylistically diverse than non-fans give them credit for, not to actually say “these songs sound like they’re by different bands”

good to see "Almost Hear You Sigh," the best ballad after 1986. There's a gem of a chord change.

yep, I voted for "Almost Hear You Sigh" over "Dance Pt 1".

"Winter" is anther song for which Jagger should've given Taylor writing credit.

"Time Waits..." excepted, I like every song on this list to varying degrees.

I don't know all of these but "Winter" is great.

"I Just Want to See His Face" always makes me think of Dr. John's first album. Keith and Bill don't play on it fwiw.

Keith gets credited for the electric piano, though?

Although now I see this: http://www.timeisonourside.com/SOIJustWantToSee.html

(a fun way to spend a morning, that site)

Huh. Wikipedia says Jagger on electric piano but adds a quote from Bobby Whitlock claiming he played electric piano. So we've narrowed it down to four people.

"We Love You" is my fav Stones track, but the Pitchfork article does link to Arthur Baker's especially wiggly remix, which reduces the Stones presence to three Mick gargles, two Mick whoops and some of the spoken word lines almost fashioned into workable hooks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rU5NvVP-RUg

From the article:

There’s been just a handful of magical moments where they’ve transcended themselves completely. The tracks collected below would’ve been considered extreme outliers in the Stones catalog at the time of their release

Yes, what an extreme outlier "We Love You" is, from the same year they released an album with a 8 minute sitar jam & dressed like wizards on the cover.

and "Winter" is in the vein of "Moonlight Mile" and even "Angie."

"You might think of The Beatles as old moldy fossils, but look deeper and their albums have some deep cuts that are just as experimental as anything Radiohead ever did!"

"We Love You" is one of my fave deep cuts and I play it out a lot, so that

I love a lot of these tracks dearly ('Dance' does everything that 'Miss You' is supposed to do and I haven't heard it a million times), but "We Love You" is it. The song is nothing without Nicky Hopkins' piano, but I'd argue that it's also Brian's best moment in the late 60s era, even more than 'No Expectations'. I don't think anybody else in 67 had thought about playing the Mellotron quite like that, and the song as a whole demonstrates the possibilities of Moroccan influence into blues/rock without sounding forced or trite - I can't remember where I read it right now but that was his hope with Beggar's, which unfortunately didn't really happen beyond a few subtle instances ('SFM', his Mellotron part on 'Stray Cat' maybe). There's this part right at the end of 'We Love You' where it sounds like they mixed in a sample of actual Moroccan music, maybe from tapes they made on one of their visits - it's mixed low but if you listen closely you'll probably hear it.

Yeah "We Love You" is a high water mark for them & will easily walk this, is my guess

Hard to think of 'We Love You' as a deep cut when it was a single.

Anyway, this is down to 'We Love You' vs. 'Time Waits For No One' vs. 'Heaven' and it's gonna be 'Time Waits For No One'

The Stones were stylistically diverse pretty much from the beginning, the only people that don't think so haven't heard anything prior to 1968 or anything after 1971.

I love Jagger's guitar on "Heaven."

stylistically diverse

I prefer "wildly erratic"

Yes, that too!

"fingerprint File?" "Continental Drift"?

I love their cover of "Good Times" It sounds more 50s than anything else the Stones did.

Rolling Stones: The Weirder Songs for discussion of these and others.

Yeah it’s weird that « WLY » is so underrated and mostly unknown to non music amateurs for a single released during their prime by one of the biggest bands in the world.
It might be my favourite single from their pre-Beggars period.

'I Just Want to See His Face', ahead of 'We Love You'.

We Love You wasn’t a hit in the States and only appeared on double album compilations, which, you know, cost twice as much and were filled with songs that were already played to death. I first heard it on a mixtape in the late 80s from a UK friend, totally blew me away. Then came ten years of me contemplating getting More Hot Rocks, but not wanting to spend that much for one song when I already had most of the rest. One of the first things I grabbed from Napster.

in what universe does Shattered not sound exactly like a primo Stones jam but with a little chorus on the guitar

^^ this

Come on didnt you read the article? Shattered is a "bizarre anomaly" because the Stones are "harmonica-slobbering blues purists"

Only half of the Stones' catalogue consists of trve Stones material.

Come on didnt you read the article?

absolutely not

Definitely a phase shifter though.

"We Love You" also wasn't an A-Side in the US, as London flipped it and pushed "Dandelion" harder ("WLU" hit #50 on the Hot 100 vs. "Dandelion" peaking at #14).

voted for emotional rescue

Definitely a phase shifter though.

bop she do be

oh I guess it’s “unh shuh doobie”

https://scontent-ort2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/61452292_1546276792175698_4835104212801028096_n.jpg?_nc_cat=108&_nc_oc=AQnfFGWBHGqqaFSQh4zO4pYBfXgL1Y5HpC1v3FVA0G205p9u7ysVtW41CcmqMhmwhJE8VOwW70xrn77Qx3NQWpxQ&_nc_ht=scontent-ort2-1.xx&oh=e6e4ec882c7c1b081c5fa765dde6311c&oe=5D91BE97

Ron Wood painting of the Stones. Looks late 70ish!

"Continental Drift" off of Steel Wheels seems like it should be on this list.

Putting break loops into the Stones was pretty damn weird too.

XP That'd be the '75 tour. The bird thing was the logo for that one.

http://www.rirocks.net/images/Rolling%20Stones%201975%20ad.jpg

Woody's '75 was insane: that Stones tour was bookended by the final tours by the Faces!

Nice call.

Woody's '75 was insane: that Stones tour was bookended by the final tours by the Faces!

― a large tuna called “Justice” (C. Grisso/McCain), Sunday, June 2, 2019

Fortunately, Woody was a sober enough person to finish two tours without destroying his body.

Hmmm I might not be much of a Stones fan because most of these are amongst my favorite songs in their respective albums. Yeah even “I just want to see his face”

Shattered might be my favorite song from them in the 70s even... and too much blood for the 80s.

'I Just Want To See His Face' - that song had a big impact on me, particularly learning how to sing in that high falsetto, the way Jagger does. When he sings like a girl, I go crazy. I said, 'I've got to learn how to do that.' I couldn't really do it until I stopped smoking. That's when it started getting easier to do. [Waits's own] 'Shore Leave' has that, 'All Stripped Down', 'Temptation'. Nobody does it like Mick Jagger; nobody does it like Prince. But this is just a tree of life. This record is the watering hole. Keith Richards plays his ass off. This has the Checkerboard Lounge all over it.

(Tomn Waits, 2005)

Ah yeah it does seem to be a very “tom waits” sounding kind of song, doesn’t surprise me it had a strong influence on him.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I would vote for Bitter Sweet Symphony but not listed.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

A worthy winner. 'Heaven' and 'Time Waits For No One' both underrated as hell.

Surprised that no-one in the thread mentioned the Lennon & McCartney vocals on 'We Love You', actually!