Quote
Pietro
There is a "Jagger's Best Lyrics" thread. Which inspired me to start a "Jagger's Worst Lyrics." Here's my choice:

What exactly is gonna happen
When her father finds out
That his virgin daughter has bordello dreams
And he's the one she wants to try out

From "Family" on "Metamorphosis."

Actually I think those are great lyrics. I've also always loved this one:

Quote
SharksWillCry
life is a party/let's get out and strut" --Mixed Emotions

Quote
lem motlow
everything he has done can be overlooked-except for lets work.

i think each person has that moment in life when they just lost their mind and did something that made no sense whatsoever.

when you hear it you cant help but wonder,did mick slip and fall,maybe hit his head? was there a car accident we didnt know about? is it someone elses song and he was forced to record it because of blackmail or they were holding his children hostage?

its so bad that i watched it on youtube recently just to see if i could make it all the way through,i didnt.

was it supposed to be some yuppie battlecry for the 80's ? a lighthearted novelty song? it didnt just suck,it redefined the phrase "this sucks".

Yeah. It was weird. It doesn't mesh or connect to anything he's ever done, philosophically. He may not be a bleeding heart, but this was downright reactionary. I don't what the hell was going on with Mick in this period, but he lost it for a while. God, I hated the 80s...

Quote
Pietro
There is a "Jagger's Best Lyrics" thread. Which inspired me to start a "Jagger's Worst Lyrics." Here's my choice:

What exactly is gonna happen
When her father finds out
That his virgin daughter has bordello dreams
And he's the one she wants to try out

From "Family" on "Metamorphosis."

He He this is brilliant lyrics in a brilliant song Pietro...

2 1 2 0

Quote
pmk251
I cannot explain why this song comes to mind. Perhaps it was the timing of its release and my disappointment that a mature band, that mature artists would come up with such teen age drivel of She's So Cold. Cold, hot, tombstones, ice cream cone, my hand just froze, Artic zone. Gads! Then you have the very nasty misogyny of the lines "When your old..." It is a now ironic bit of tasteless put down that Jagger previously used in TWFNO and it put me off and is ultimately tiresome.

IMHO you're way overthinking it...just enjoy it for what it is.

Quote
franzk
Streets Of Love

The awful truth
Is really sad
I must admit
The lyrics are awful bad.

...make that: "Those lines..." - gives it more flow.

Quote
Deltics
Stoned...
Outta mah mind...
Here I go...
Ah yeah...
Where am I at?...
uh, uh, uh,...
Yeah! Yeah!

Better than Mixed Emotions.

Best: As tears go by, Mother's Little Helper, Stray Cat Blues, Sympathy, Street Fighting Man, Fool to Cry, Faraway Eyes, Salt Of The Earth, Monkey Man, Sweet Virginia,

Worst: Start Me Up, Hey Negrita, Sweet Neo Con, Some Girls, IORR...

Quote
stupidguy2

Quote
alieb

Quote
71Tele

Quote
treaclefingers

Let's work

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.

la, la, la

Oh my God! Does it actually have la-la-las? I don't remember, that that would just send it over into ....tragic.

To me, this turd (music, lyrics, video, ánd deliverance) is by far the cringeworthiest moment in R'n'Roll History;
second to none - not even the 1976 Elvis , any-area Paul McCartney, or Rod Stewart's Great American Songbooks...

Quote
RoughJusticeOnYa

Quote
stupidguy2

Quote
alieb

Quote
71Tele

Quote
treaclefingers

Let's work

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.

la, la, la

Oh my God! Does it actually have la-la-las? I don't remember, that that would just send it over into ....tragic.

To me, this turd (music, lyrics, video, ánd deliverance) is by far the cringeworthiest moment in R'n'Roll History;
second to none - not even the 1976 Elvis , any-area Paul McCartney, or Rod Stewart's Great American Songbooks...

I might vote the 1973 (I think), "Having Fun With Elvis Onstage" talking album would be a great runnerup in the 'cringeworthy' department.

But yeah, unfortunately MJ is all alone out in first place with Let's Work.

Quote
Come On

Quote
Pietro
There is a "Jagger's Best Lyrics" thread. Which inspired me to start a "Jagger's Worst Lyrics." Here's my choice:

What exactly is gonna happen
When her father finds out
That his virgin daughter has bordello dreams
And he's the one she wants to try out

From "Family" on "Metamorphosis."

He He this is brilliant lyrics in a brilliant song Pietro...

I don't see how anyone can find merit in these lyrics. "Bordello dreams"? So she wants to work in a bordello. And after she gets that job in the bordello, her father wants to try her out. Bizarre!

Just shows how good a songwriter MJ is

Don't tear me up - Evening gown

[www.youtube.com]

Hang on to me

[www.youtube.com]

Wandering spirit

[www.youtube.com]

Fantastic songs

WS was one hell of a CD....

BTW - the best performer ever

You are very brave to begin such a message. You could be killed by most of happy friends here, when one dares speak of the genius of Mick. I find his solo work (if you can call a passion, a job) fantastic. Each new album blew me away and though I love the Stones, I'm crazy about Mick'solo work (one day in the future, it will be rediscovered and judged at its fair value, by those who harshly bashed it. Even Alfie is one of his greatest achievements. No need to wait someone die to tell he's the GREAT poet. His words in his music really already talk to some of us.

Quote
Shezeboss
You are very brave to begin such a message. You could be killed by most of happy friends here, when one dares speak of the genius of Mick. I find his solo work (if you can call a passion, a job) fantastic. Each new album blew me away and though I love the Stones, I'm crazy about Mick'solo work (one day in the future, it will be rediscovered and judged at its fair value, by those who harshly bashed it. Even Alfie is one of his greatest achievements. No need to wait someone die to tell he's the GREAT poet. His words in his music really already talk to some of us.

I'm not a basher generally, but I'd suggest with a comment like that you're likely setting yourself up for a world of abuse!

Jagger is a master lyricist in my opinion and of course yes sometimes he thinks "that'll do" but so what. I see no point in talking about his so called worst lyrics. Just seems stupid to me.

My biggest gripe with him being called a brilliant lyricist by so many is that it overshadows the second half of his songwriting chops. His performing is recognised first, his lyricism second and equal second I guess has always been his notoriety as a womaniser. This all overshadows the fact that the man is point blank one of the greatest composers ever in my opinion.

He has written alone and with others (Keith most notably obviously) so many great works and it's never mentioned in the press. Even with many of the songs in the early days - the melodies didn't write themselves. Yes on occasion Richards pitched in with that or on fact wrote it - but many times it was Jagger. Along with the fact he's written classics such as YCAGWYW, Sympathy, Brown Sugar, Miss you, Continental drift, Out of tears, Saint of me, Laugh I nearly died and so many more alone.

I basically feel Richards said goodbye to songwriting relevance with Exile and if not for Jagger was coming into his own by '68 as a writer the Stones would have died in the arse by the mid 70s. By '68 Jagger didn't need Keith anymore I believe but conversely Keith would come to rely on Jagger for the rest of his (Rolling Stones) career from that point on. And I believe this includes composing.

Jagger is a rock god. He's also along with the likes of Lennon, McCartney, Townshend, Dylan etc the greatest songwriter known to me.

Just a pity he used such a great line "you're just a poor girl in a rich man's house" in a song that after three decades I can't still figure out if I like or not

This one

[www.youtube.com]

Quote
mtaylor
This one

[www.youtube.com]

Cringeworthy performance too... he doesn't even hit the notes (which would be fine if it was a fast song but there is not much else to pay attention to in a song like this) not to mention the cheesy organ accompaniment

Quote
OzHeavyThrobber
Jagger is a master lyricist in my opinion and of course yes sometimes he thinks "that'll do" but so what. I see no point in talking about his so called worst lyrics. Just seems stupid to me.

My biggest gripe with him being called a brilliant lyricist by so many is that it overshadows the second half of his songwriting chops. His performing is recognised first, his lyricism second and equal second I guess has always been his notoriety as a womaniser. This all overshadows the fact that the man is point blank one of the greatest composers ever in my opinion.

He has written alone and with others (Keith most notably obviously) so many great works and it's never mentioned in the press. Even with many of the songs in the early days - the melodies didn't write themselves. Yes on occasion Richards pitched in with that or on fact wrote it - but many times it was Jagger. Along with the fact he's written classics such as YCAGWYW, Sympathy, Brown Sugar, Miss you, Continental drift, Out of tears, Saint of me, Laugh I nearly died and so many more alone.

I basically feel Richards said goodbye to songwriting relevance with Exile and if not for Jagger was coming into his own by '68 as a writer the Stones would have died in the arse by the mid 70s. By '68 Jagger didn't need Keith anymore I believe but conversely Keith would come to rely on Jagger for the rest of his (Rolling Stones) career from that point on. And I believe this includes composing.

Jagger is a rock god. He's also along with the likes of Lennon, McCartney, Townshend, Dylan etc the greatest songwriter known to me.

Just a pity he used such a great line "you're just a poor girl in a rich man's house" in a song that after three decades I can't still figure out if I like or not

Do you prefer his 'revised' 2013/2014 version, "You're just a poor boy in a rich girl's house"?

Quote
latebloomer
Following the River comes to mind right now. Mick is a superb lyricist, very underrated.

+1



I am a Frenchie ,as Mick affectionately called them in the Old Grey Whistle Test in 1977 .

Play upon your heart strings to me
I will sing a strange melody
Dance with me a magic ballet
Stay with me 'til night turns to day
Let me in your dreams

Angel in my heart
Angel in my heart

By a pool of darkening dreams
Love is slowly twisting downstream
Underneath the tortuous trees
Out into the sad, silent seas
Lock me in your arms

Angel in my heart
Angel in my heart

How can I feel, how can I feel love when you're gone
How much sin, how much can true forgiving cost
I'm in your skin, I want to win back what I've lost

How can I feel, how can I feel love when you're gone
I'm in your skin, I want to win back what I've lost

I can feel the salt on my skin
I can hear the birds on the wing
I can smell the wood on the fire
I can see the smoke of desire
Let me in your dreams

Angel in my heart
Angel in my heart

Quote
SwayStones

Quote
latebloomer
Following the River comes to mind right now. Mick is a superb lyricist, very underrated.

+1

one of my favourites! Used to listen to it before bed every night.

I am a Frenchie ,as Mick affectionately called them in the Old Grey Whistle Test in 1977 .

Mick Jagger: Our Most Underrated Songwriter?
By Ron Rosenbaum | 12/10/01 12:00am

I learned about George Harrison after a draft of this column went to the copy editors. Reading the many well-deserved tributes he’s getting now made me feel even more strongly the importance of paying tribute to artists while they’re still with us rather than waiting for death to provide a “peg.” It’s one of the things I’ve tried to do since I began The Edgy Enthusiast, and you can think of this Mick Jagger tribute in that light.

Recently I came upon a startling remark by Stephen Booth, a brilliant literary scholar who occupies a special place in my pantheon for his transformative edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets. (His Yale University Press commentary on the sonnets is an exhilarating exercise in polysemous pleasure–which is not as dirty as it sounds.)

Anyway, I’d been tracking down some of Mr. Booth’s other essays in places like Pacific Coast Philology when I came upon that remarkable opening line from one of his essays: “Shakespeare is, of course, our most underrated poet.” Shakespeare underrated ?

In a tongue-in-cheek kind of way, Mr. Booth is saying that all the millions and perhaps billions of words expended on Shakespeare’s poetry have still not come close to justly rating his immensity. So he’s underrated! In that spirit, I would like to argue that Mick Jagger is our most underrated songwriter. Despite the millions and millions of words expended on Mick Jagger’s rock-star persona, on the mansions and the babes and the paternity suits and the Tootsie Roll soaked in acid on the tour plane (or was that Led Zeppelin?), despite–or because of–the millions and millions of words about Mick Jagger the celebrity , no one has done justice to Mick Jagger as a writer . A writer of brilliant, soulful, soaring, incantatory anthems, hymns to broken hearts (“Memory Motel”), broken spirits (“Wild Horses”) and fragmentary hopes for redemption (the incomparable “Sweet Virginia”). And let’s not forget, at this particular moment, that he’s one of the rare rock songwriters who has addressed the question of evil and apocalypse (“Sympathy for the Devil,” “Gimme Shelter”) in a sophisticated way.

He’s more well-known for his “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” manic-exhibitionist stage persona, but he’s done some killer slow, aching ballads, such as “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and “Angie” and “Time Waits for No One.”

He’s been doing it from the beginning of his songwriting career, with underappreciated slow-tempo numbers like “Blue Turns to Grey,” “The Singer Not the Song” and one of my all-time, all-time faves, “Tell Me (You’re Coming Back to Me).”

That’s the one where I think he first discovered the power of incantatory repetition that transforms simple love songs into soaring sonic prayers in the gutter religion of love. Sometimes it’s the despairing prayer of a Graham Greene whiskey priest, as in the almost completely overlooked “Till the Next Good Bye.” Sometimes it’s the bleak beauty, the spare Beckett-like eloquence of “No Expectations.” He’s got another potential classic in the anthemic “Wild Horses” mode on his new solo album, Goddess in the Doorway –a song called “Don’t Call Me Up.” But that’s not what prompted this column, or even my call to radio guru Jonathan Schwartz.

No, what prompted me to call Mr. Schwartz was the dispiriting news that I first read in Page Six, that Mick Jagger’s new solo album only sold a paltry 900 copies in its first week of release in the U.K.! This despite a prime-time network documentary (ABC’s Being Mick Jagger ) about his living the high life, hobnobbing with Prince Charles at the royal premiere of the film he’s just produced ( Enigma , starring Kate Winslet), and making music with the many children of his several wives.

I say “despite” the prime-time documentary, but maybe because of it–because, again, it played into the image that people have always used to underrate him, to write him off as a jet-setting celeb these days, rather than the serious artist he was and still is.

This jet-set stuff obscures the fact that Mick Jagger has written powerful songs that will last forever (the unbearably sad and beautiful “Memory Motel” will last as long as memory–or at least as long as motels).

But before I go any further, I think it’s important to say that when I say “Mick Jagger has written,” I mean the songs that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards have written. Most of them are written for Mr. Jagger’s voice , for his persona. But I have a feeling that the writing credit “Jagger/Richards” represents a real collaboration, whatever the division of labor may be.*

Actually, I’d love to know how Mick and Keith work together as a team. (My fantasy is to do one of those Paris Review “Writers at Work” interviews with them.)

But when I say Mick Jagger is our most underrated songwriter, I also believe he’s our most underrated voice. A voice–and a delivery–that deserves comparison, by this time, with Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, Bob Dylan and Neil Young as one of the defining male voices of the century.

Yes: Jagger and Sinatra. That’s why I felt compelled to put in a call to my friend Jonathan Schwartz, an elegant advocate for Sinatra, Bennett, all those guys, but someone who also has a deep understanding of Dylan. I’ve had some of my most illuminating Dylan conversations with Jonathan, and yet I couldn’t recall any real conversation about the Stones.

Jonathan Schwartz, as I’m sure you know, is the gifted novelist, memoirist and host of two widely admired Saturday and Sunday afternoon music-and-meditative- monologue shows on WNYC. When I reached him, he told me he was about to send me news of an additional gig as on-air producer and programmer on a singer-songwriter channel of the new no-commercials satellite-radio service XM, where, he said, they allow him the freedom to play “deep tracks”– overlooked classics by his favorites, such as (in the order he reeled them off) Lena Horne, Count Basie, Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett and that other guy he likes so much, Frank whatever.

I felt that Jonathan might be the one person who could redress the imbalance in Mick Jagger’s reputation, repair the underestimation of Mr. Jagger as a songwriter.

I was ready to say, “See here, Jonathan, you’re one of the few people who has the perspicuity to appreciate both that Frank guy and Bob Dylan. It’s time you did the same for Mick Jagger’s songs.”

But before I got two sentences into my prepared rant, Jonathan stopped me to say that, in fact, he has played Jagger on his mostly Sinatra and Tony Bennett show.

He told me how he segued recently from a conga riff at the end of “Sympathy for the Devil” into Mel Tormé’s “I Don’t Want to Cry Anymore” in a way that perfectly “married the two genres of music,” as he put it.

And then he cited several other Jagger songs he’d played, including some of those classic anthemic ballads that are my favorites as well, among them “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” “Wild Horses” and “Angie.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised at Jonathan’s discernment. We went on after that to consider the relationship between Jagger and Dylan as songwriters. Was Jagger, as Jonathan initially suggested, “a blue-collar Dylan”?

I put it differently: Mick Jagger’s audience might have been more authentically blue-collar, in the sense that Bob Dylan’s initial audience bought their blue work shirts at the Harvard Co-op, so to speak. But Mick Jagger’s songwriting was anything but blue-collar, even when–Jonathan had a point here–portraying blue-collar kids in “Satisfaction” and “Street Fighting Man.”

Mick Jagger, I argued, was more of an aesthete in the sense that his art–or part of his art–was not to call attention to his art. Not to call attention the way Dylan did, with over-the-top verbal pyrotechnics, at least until Dylan shifted into a new, more pared-down mode of songwriting with Blood on the Tracks –not necessarily better, perhaps, or as novel as the Highway 61-Blonde on Blonde Dylan, but very, well, Jaggeresque. (I await the sensitively written Ph.D. thesis comparing “Gimme Shelter” with “Shelter from the Storm.”)

Meanwhile, though, Mick Jagger–always a peacock on stage–was, in his ballads, more in the mode (or the pose) of the aristo-poet than the blue-collar rocker. At his unaffected best, Jagger can display flashes of the tossed-off brilliance of Byron.

But there’s something else about Jagger that defines him as a songwriter, defines him as a singer–something that doesn’t necessarily appear on a lyric sheet. It’s his beautiful use of incantation.

Incantation : a lovely word for a special kind of vocal recurrence, one that combines overtones of prayer, magic, spell casting, all that.

Incantation: It’s a kind of vocal voodoo that has almost completely overcome the genius of Van Morrison, so that sometimes you feel he’s only about incantation.

Ecstatic incantation: It’s what defines rock music against the “standards” given such knee-jerk reverence by young fogies and old. (Well, maybe that and the Little Richard-like, ecstatic ” Whooo-oooo! ” that made the Beatles the Beatles.)

But what made the Stones the Stones is Jagger’s jagged-edge incantation.

No one does more with the incantation of a first line–a focused incantation–than Jagger. It’s there in the beautiful, desperate, hopeless urgency of “Tell Me (You’re Comin’ Back to Me).” And in the way it’s not just “Wild Horses” but “Wild, wild horses.” And then there’s the amazing apocalyptic couplet that fades to infinity in “Gimme Shelter”:

War …it’s just a shot away, shot away, shot away

Love …it’s just a kiss away, kiss away, kiss away….

(By the way, has anyone ever compressed a deeper truth about human nature in two lines of a song?)

It’s not “You’re just a memory,” but “You’re just a memory, just a memory, just a memory” in “Memory Motel.” Each incantatory reiteration of “memory” conjuring up a very real ghost, rather than consigning the unquiet spirit to the memory hole–which is the ostensible declarative intent of the song.

So many Jagger/Richards songs deal with time (and, implicitly, memory), don’t they? “Time Is on My Side” (“Time, time, TIME / Is on my side … yes it is”), “Good Times, Bad Times,” “Out of Time,” “This Could Be the Last Time” ….

I’ve celebrated before the brilliant visionary metaphysics of “Time Waits for No One,” with Mick Taylor’s guitar somehow spilling out a vision of beauty and complexity that virtually translates Stephen Hawking’s theory of “imaginary time” into guitar runs. String theory!

Recently, I came across an extraordinary phrase in a poem by Robert Lowell:

We are all old-timers,

Each of us holds a locked razor.

I found it in the foreword of the fascinating book I’d just picked up, Gracefully Insane (by the Boston Globe writer Alex Beam). It’s about McLean’s, that remarkable institution right outside Boston where some of the best and brightest madmen and madwomen, from Lowell to Sylvia Plath to Susanna Kaysen, were resident–some recurrently, like Lowell.

In a section of “Waking in the Blue,” Lowell talks about waking up there and then glimpsing the “shaky future grow familiar” in those who were older and had been there longer–and more often. Thus:

We are all old-timers,

Each of us holds a locked razor .

For Lowell, the “locked razor” suggests mortality, insanity. In the songs of Mick Jagger, the “locked razor” is the heart, a ticking time bomb–the locked razor whose jagged edge scars when it opens.

Quote
alieb

Quote
mtaylor
This one

[www.youtube.com]

Cringeworthy performance too... he doesn't even hit the notes (which would be fine if it was a fast song but there is not much else to pay attention to in a song like this) not to mention the cheesy organ accompaniment

Do you understand music discipline? Doesn't seem to be the case....

Quote
mtaylor

Quote
alieb

Quote
mtaylor
This one

[www.youtube.com]

Cringeworthy performance too... he doesn't even hit the notes (which would be fine if it was a fast song but there is not much else to pay attention to in a song like this) not to mention the cheesy organ accompaniment

Do you understand music discipline? Doesn't seem to be the case....

not sure what you mean by that? I am a trained musician if that's what you were asking.i thought i was agreeing with you...unless you meant this is one of your favourites? Even his worst work lyrically is beyond anything I could write but I just think the arrangement is pretty bad.

Down in the hole !

Memo From Turner

[savoirfaire-hoorayforhollywood.blogspot.com]

nice read Bliss...thanks for that.

Good stuff Bliss and thank you.

I'm with the guy in bring Jagger's ability as a composer to the forefront just he should have done his homework before doing so.

"Gimme shelter" for example was solely written by Richards so sort of diminishes his points by making some of these mistakes. He also is mainly banging on about his lyricism and the dynamics associated with Jagger's writing of them - all of which deserves recognition completely - just that he doesn't enter into the world of Jagger composing music.

I agree with him and it's an insightful point that part of Jagger's brilliance as a writer is that he doesn't draw attention to it. I also love that someone else loves "Don't call me up". Great track.

Quote
OzHeavyThrobber

"Gimme shelter" for example was solely written by Richards so sort of diminishes his points by making some of these mistakes.

Gimme shelter WAS NOT solely written by Richards

Yeah nice contribution to the thread. As a sideline I read lower case just as competently as upper.

Jagger has never made comment as far as I'm aware he had anything to do with the composition of it and Richards basically claims it entirely as his own in 'Life'.

If you've anything to add that sheds light on Jagger having co-written this I'd be INTERESTED.

It can be very difficult to work out Mick and Keith's respective lyrical contributions, although there are some songs which are sole compositions which give you a good idea of their style. They do have a distinctive style, but sometimes things are added or fixed up.

Lyrics are sung, and as the singer, Mick could well add some touches to Keith's lyrics that make the song sound better.

But the circumstances that led Keith to write "Gimme Shelter" are so well known that it seems sloppy for the writer to mention it as an example of Mick's lyrics.