As I was listening to IORR last night, it dawned on me that the best Stones albums are the one's where they stick close to their 2 closest musical influences,black music (soul, R&B, blues) and country music. I started to think about their last few discs and realized that they really haven't been sticking to this format.
I thought it maybe is because the direction black music has taken...one that is steeped in RAP...is not something the Stones can/will/or want to do. In the 70s and 80s they were able to "keep up" the the current black music trends as evidenced by Hearbreaker, IYRWTBMF,Miss You, Dance etc..

They tried to add in a little rap piece in Has Anybody Seen My Baby and it didn't really work. Now it seems that they are relying on reggae as their "black music" format.

Country music for the most part today is over-produced crap and the Stones probably don;t want to keep up with that either.

Maybe this is why everything after Tattoo You has been a little disappointing.

Maybe I don't know what the hell I'm talking about

Keith of course is completely straight

Hi Cafaro, I think your observation is very astute. You're dead-on. One can almost trace the development of commercial black music from the Stones albums. Going from Sticky all the way to Tattoo. very good thought.
I think this is what bugged me more about Voodoo than anything else. There was very little "black" in the music.
And much of what we dig in their sound on Exile and Sticky is the horns, the blues, the country. When the Stones add their own twist to it it becomes pure best "Stones".
And on VL and also SW the writing, the production is so clinical and somehow cold. I don't care what people think about Voodoo. There is SOMETHING lacking from that album. Don Was tried way too hard to make this another Exile. That is another reason why I am not crazy about the news that he is too produce the new one.

I disagree re VL - the 2nd half of it is beautiful. LIS is (like ABSM a bad single - a funky enough rocker with a nothing lyric, scans nursery rhyme, but VL gets better as it goes along, and there is plenty of heart & soul on Thru & Thru, Break It Down, Sweethearts, Suck, Mean Disposition, New Faces, etc. I don't know Was is the problem where there is one,- also B2B was quite different from VL, lots more 'black' influence. IORR remains imo their least inspired, an attempt to prove (when both their & rock's 'relevance' was in question) they could 'still' rock after a dozen years (unprecedented in '74). There's much more going on musically on the subsequent albums, tho hints of the funk they'd explore more fully & effectively are evident.

I agree and think Voodoo is a great album. Better than ER, Undercover, DW, SW, IORR. Would have been cool if they included songs like The Storm, Jump On Top Of Me, Honest Man and so on. There was almost enough good material to make a double album.

Agree Hound Dog - with the singles I count 19 songs, more than Exile has. Plus the Stew/Brew stuff...

I thing that these are good discs but it's almost as though the Stones don't the heights so to speak, when they stray fom their roots. I love the format of Voodoo but the production drags it down. My point is that it seems that the Stones music has become somewhat static while their musical influences have gone in different directions.

R&B has become very rap and hip-hop laden. I can't see the Stones doing that type of music.

Country has become less country and more pop. God, I hoe they never do anything like "Today's Country"

Bluegrass is evolving but the big resurgence of it due to Oh Brother seems to be waning. The Stones stopped doing Bluegrass in the early 70s

Blues will always be there whether it's in the background or popular. The Stones have always done this very well but what was the last "blues" song they recorded in the studio? Stripped?

It was great to hear some of their "roots" music on Live Licks. To me, those were the best performances on the disc. I think the last time they really recorded their influences was on Wandering Spirit and Talk is Cheap.

At this stage of their careers, maybe they feel they don't need to emulate the music of Motown, Stax, Chess, Sun, Atlantic, etc... but to me, that's when they are at their best!

Keith of course is completely straight