heres a question for you all.
what if the album A Bigger Bang came out this summer, song for song, but it was some other band that recorded it. Would you guys think it is a great album?

Or does ABB only really seem great because it is a Stones album?

What if this was some new bands debut, would you have soooo much favortism for it?

No, of course not.

Thats a fairly irrelevant question - I mean who else releases rock and roll like the Stones; the only other band that even had a similar vibe was the Faces. I would be a huge fan of a band if they played music like the Rolling Stones.

How about another hypothetical - If ABB was released in 1977 before SG - would it be a good album? I would think it would have been praised.

yeah shatterednVA
this is kind of what i was thinking about, just how much context effects our listening of an album/ band/ song. just knowing that a certain band is singing a new song we are hearing for the first time really effects it.
there are a lot of stones unreleased tracks that i think sound cool, but i know if it was another band, i probably wouldn't even give them the time of day.

what if ABB was released in 1977 (which i really don't think would be that impossible given the style of a lot of AB, I imagine it wouldn't have as much effect as some girls would have, and probably a lot of people would think that the stones were really wussing out. but ABB in 2005 sounds like the stones with some integrity. also, at this stage people aren't looking to the stones to innovate and further the current music, unlike from 66-77 when the band was on the cutting edge of pop music.

people look to the band now to produce a good but reliable album. its not expected that the stones will push the boundaries and sound, that is what people like bjork, portishead, radiohead, lamb of god and outkasts are here for.

have you ever said to yourself after hearing a song ' oh i wish the (insert another band's name here) did that, I would probably like it more'. this shows how our context of a song changes out listening of it.