"It profits me but little that a vigilant authority always protects the tranquillity of my pleasures and constantly averts all dangers from my path, without my care or concern, if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life."

--Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Friday, January 11, 2013

The Regular Guy's List of the Top 20 Rolling Stones Songs (#2)

The countdown proceeds apace.   Here's where we stand:

20. Loving Cup (Exile on Main Street)
19. Wild Horses (Sticky Fingers)
18. Bitch (Sticky Fingers)
17. Monkey Man (Let it Bleed)
16. Let it Loose (Exile)
15. Prodigal Son (Beggar's Banquet)
14. Can't You Hear Me Knocking (Sticky Fingers)
13. Shattered (Some Girls)
12. Happy (Exile)
11. Rocks Off (Exile)
10. (tie) Jumping Jack Flash (single only)
10. (tie) Street Fighting Man (Beggar's Banquet)
9. You Can't Always Get What You Want (Let It Bleed)
8. Honky Tonk Woman (single only)
7. Midnight Rambler (Let It Bleed)
6. Start Me Up (Tattoo You)
5. Tumbling Dice (Exile on Main Street)
4. Satisfaction (Out of Our Heads)
3. Brown Sugar (Sticky Fingers)

 The final two could go in any order, and some might switch them, but nearly every ranking of Stones songs I've ever seen has these two at the top.   They are, to put it simply, two of the great works of art of the late 1960s in the dominant, emergent art form of that era, rock-and-roll.   Perhaps more than any other music of that era, they capture the strangeness, the wildness, the chaos, the danger, the violence, the sense of impending apocalpyse.  Without further ado,

2. Sympathy for the Devil (Beggar's Banquet)



By the way, the crashing slide out of the guitar solo is about the coolest thing imaginable.   Keith, Keith, Keith, you freakin' genius!

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