The Working Stiff Show

This week: 35th anniversary of the Rolling Stones’ Some Girls.

This week marks the 35th anniversary of the Rolling Stones‘ 1978 blockbuster, Some Girls. The album, which was competing on the charts and turntables around the globe with breakthrough punk and disco records, was able to absorb the musical influence of what was going down in the clubs and the streets of New York City and become the first album in years to drastically redefine the Stones’ sound. It also featured the band’s first chart-topper since 1973’s “Angie” — the disco-based monster summer hit and instant classic, “Miss You, which remains the Stones’ last chart-topper to date.

Check out this classic video:

The album’s followup single to “Miss You” — “Beast Of Burden” — peaked at Number Eight, with the third and final single, “Shattered,” stalling at Number 31. Mick Jagger explained that “Shattered” — like most of Some Girls — picked up on the key musical movements happening in London and New York City: [“It’s kind of, like, a punk beat with this guitar riff that Keith does, and me — sort of what I do is a semi-rap thing. It’s sort of half talking in it. So, I was obviously very influenced by that. But I think this record is a good synthesis of all those kind of things that were going on at the time.”

  • Although Some Girls had some obvious punk influences on songs like “Respectable” and “Lies,” Jagger feels that it had a much broader pallet than just the sound of the gutter: [“Inevitably, you live in the time you’re in. And you couldn’t possibly avoided the whole thing, of the feeling of that. . . of those years. I mean the years before that. I think it’s more in the playing than the writing — I mean, I think a bit of both. But having said that, of course you can say that and then you can turn around say (laughs) ‘Yeah, but you did this country song that was really. . . you did this straight country song, and then this dance song ‘ — which is ‘Miss You,’ which had nothing to do with punk. Couldn’t be more different.”
  • Highlights on the album include “Miss You,” “Beast Of Burden,” “Far Away Eyes,” “Respectable,” “Before They Make Me Run,” and their cover of the Temptations‘ “Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me),” among others.
  • Some Girls, which was released on June 9th, 1978 and marked the first studio album to feature Ron Wood as a full time member of the band, was recorded between October 1977 and March 1978 at Paris’ EMI’s Pathe Marconi Studios.
  • The album hit Number One on July 15th, 1978 and topped the Billboard 200 album chart for two weeks. It has sold over six million copies to date.
  • Some Girls‘ lead single, “Miss You,” topped the charts for one week starting on August 5th, 1978.
  • In 2011 the Stones released a deluxe reissue of Some Girls featuring a dozen vault tracks — some of which were recently completed by Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and producer Don Was, along with a DVD — Some Girls, Live In Texas ’78. The concert was filmed on July 18th, 1978 in Forth Worth, Texas at the Will Rogers Memorial Center.

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