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Stoneage


Sure, but a rather shortlived hit then. Then again it depends on your definition of a hit.

For me, a 'hit' is a single that reaches the top-10 of a national chart; not a regional, or niche chart, such as 'top-rock'; top-country; top-vinyl, etc. Anything below 10, I consider to be a 'minor hit' Undercover just missed out in the U.K. I'm pretty sure it reached #11 on the top-40, here.

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J-J-Flash
GNR was a hair band, and in my opinion Def Leppard were far better. Some people are just obsessed with GNR who made one good album. Undercover was not a hit anywhere close to Start Me Up so not sure what you are talking about, not a good comparison.

Start Me Up reached no. 7 in the British charts and no. 2 in the US Hot 100, Undercover of the Night no. 11 in the British charts and no. 9 in the US Hot 100, so that's not a real big difference, especially since the video for Undercover was banned in many countries or only aired after 2100 PM.

And it doesn't matter if you like GnR or not, fact is that there wasn't a bigger band from 1988 until 1992 than GnR, even rivalling the Stones.

Mathijs

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Stoneage

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Mathijs

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GasLightStreet

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Stoneage
Maybe it is? U didn't have a hit song though. Like SMU on TY. A lot of things happened in the music industry in the early 80s. Somehow U didn't feel connected to that. The young fans chose other artists and sounds.
The Stones tried to renew themselves but never really pulled it off.

UOTN was a hit song.

It was a top 10 hit song, and it was aired continuously on MTV, in both the censored and uncensored version.

Mathijs

Sure, but a rather shortlived hit then. Then again it depends on your definition of a hit.

Any song released as a single in the US and the UK that enters the Top 40 is considered a hit as well as in any country. Where it peaks on radio and with sales, which don't necessarily coincide, is generally what it is known as when being specifically talked about. UOTN was a Top 30, 20, 10, 5 and 1 in various countries. How long is a moot point - it got there. That is a hit song.

There are songs that aren't singles that are as popular as a hit single minus any charting. Sympathy For The Devil and Under My Thumb are perfect examples. Both tracks are on multiple Stones hits compilations.

In the 2020s it apparently doesn't mean what it used to mean even though singles and albums are still talked about being number one occasionally. With music rental aka streaming being the most utilized form of listening, Paint It Black is their biggest song ever just on Spotify with, over 1.3 billion streams as posted in an October 2024 article about the Stones top 20 streamed songs on Spotify and an article done on February 3, 2026 it's up to over 1.6 billion.

Those numbers are probably a bit higher if Apple, Amazon, Tidal, Deezer and whatever else was included.

Obviously the meaning of a single is different in the 2020s compared to the 1950s-1990s. There are artists that do not release anything via a physical medium.

Mick Jagger released Eazy Sleazy only on YouTube. Did he make his money back that he spent producing it? With 3.3 million views and YouTube paying $0.00164 per stream per-artist channel... that's just over $5412 in US.

Looking over the Spotify list not one song from U is on it - and it's their Top 500 streamed songs. The dub version of UOTN is at 480. I probably account for maybe 10 of those.

The most watched music video on YouTube is Anybody Seen My Baby at 90 million +.

[kworb.net]

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Mathijs

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J-J-Flash
GNR was a hair band, and in my opinion Def Leppard were far better. Some people are just obsessed with GNR who made one good album. Undercover was not a hit anywhere close to Start Me Up so not sure what you are talking about, not a good comparison.

Start Me Up reached no. 7 in the British charts and no. 2 in the US Hot 100, Undercover of the Night no. 11 in the British charts and no. 9 in the US Hot 100, so that's not a real big difference, especially since the video for Undercover was banned in many countries or only aired after 2100 PM.

And it doesn't matter if you like GnR or not, fact is that there wasn't a bigger band from 1988 until 1992 than GnR, even rivalling the Stones.

Mathijs

Only reaching #7 surprises me, considering it's one of their definite 'mega hits', globally; the last, in fact. I just thought it'd have at least reached the top-3 on the U.K. Top 40

I think time should be considered here also. How is the "hit" doing 3 months from now? Or 1 year or even 10? Another thing is the finacial muscles of a big act.
I guess it's possible to "buy" a high chart entry just by the high number of rotation a big act gets on the first single. That's why time matters.

'Hits' are often not the best music, just the most digestible and liked by the masses. A discerning ear will draw more to 'Rocks off' vs. a 'Brown Sugar'. When people would say 'I love the Stones' but you could tell they barely broke the surface I would rightly predict the only album they knew was Hot Rocks

Comparing hits when talking about Start Me Up and Undercover, really, there is a reason why Start Me up is played at every show. Where it reached on the charts, does that really matter? She's the Boss sold just as good as Undercover and Tattoo You, does that make it better?

All the Way Down is a decent song on a so so, overproduced Stones album.

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Hound Dog
Comparing hits when talking about Start Me Up and Undercover, really, there is a reason why Start Me up is played at every show. Where it reached on the charts, does that really matter? She's the Boss sold just as good as Undercover and Tattoo You, does that make it better?

It doesn't.

If sales was the case, EXILE would still be a raggily dog of an album.

Same for UNDERCOLER.

Brown Sugar vs Rocks Off - well it's obvious but for me they are A A songs.

There are a lot of other Stones songs that are A songs... for example, I'd rather hear and listen to Monkey Man vs SFTD.

As fans of a band the hit singles are the hit singles but there are/may be better songs on the album.

That's not the record industry nor Billboard's fault.

Subculture has say: CYKMN is a great example in movies.

Spotify doesn't determine success. One can not equate the amount of users and subscribers to the success of streaming numbers for a song/act. There are other streaming services as well as who bought records etc.

It's extremely unlikely that Paint It Black's "success" on Spotify has anything to do with people from when it was released.

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Hound Dog
Comparing hits when talking about Start Me Up and Undercover, really, there is a reason why Start Me up is played at every show. Where it reached on the charts, does that really matter? She's the Boss sold just as good as Undercover and Tattoo You, does that make it better?

All the Way Down is a decent song on a so so, overproduced Stones album.

Undercover came out in a time when video's got more important than the music. Start ME Up was a radio hit, Undercover was a video hit. It was the time of Jackson's Billie Jean and Thriller, Wild Boys by Duran Duran, Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Land of Confusion and Jesus He Knows Me by Genesis, Like a Virgin by Madonna, Sweet Dreams by Eurhythmics: -we didn't buy the singles, we turned on MTC 24 hours a day and the video's were just played 4 times per hour. And up to the mid 1990's MTV was so exceedingly important to us, it was the looking glass to the rest of the world. We woke up with MTV and and went to bed with MTV.

All I remember was that Undercover of the Night was in heavy, heavy rotation. It was shown three times every hour. Then came Too Much Blood, which was also in massive rotation. I don't remember She Was Hot -that became popular when Video Rewind came out.

Mathijs

Maybe Undercover was a video hit, being part of an endless video rotation when there was much less to select from, but as an audio hit Start Me Up is leagues above Undercover.

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skytrench
Maybe Undercover was a video hit, being part of an endless video rotation when there was much less to select from, but as an audio hit Start Me Up is leagues above Undercover.

I may be counted as one in a supposed minority of the opposite view.

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Hound Dog
All the Way Down is a decent song on a so so, overproduced Stones album.

Agree on most counts!

Definitely a decent song. I'd probably rank Undercover a notch above 'so-so' (certainly not the next Sticky or Exile as some are saying) ... as for overproduced, I am not sure how one determines that.

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LeonidP

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Hound Dog
All the Way Down is a decent song on a so so, overproduced Stones album.

Agree on most counts!

Definitely a decent song. I'd probably rank Undercover a notch above 'so-so' (certainly not the next Sticky or Exile as some are saying) ... as for overproduced, I am not sure how one determines that.

It's about taste.

U is not overproduced, just over worked in some places - but that was the deal then. A bit over the top with? Too Much Blood.

Nothing else goes there.

It's the band recording natural follow up to EMOTIONAL RESCUE.

Nothing by the band was recorded for TATTOO YOU.

It's no longer than 1975 to 1978 for ER to U. Yes a majority of SG was recorded in 1977 which leaves the obvious for 1978.

In late 1982 the simply continued on.

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GasLightStreet

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LeonidP

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Hound Dog
All the Way Down is a decent song on a so so, overproduced Stones album.

Agree on most counts!

Definitely a decent song. I'd probably rank Undercover a notch above 'so-so' (certainly not the next Sticky or Exile as some are saying) ... as for overproduced, I am not sure how one determines that.

It's about taste...

Really?

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LeonidP

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GasLightStreet

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LeonidP

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Hound Dog
All the Way Down is a decent song on a so so, overproduced Stones album.

Agree on most counts!

Definitely a decent song. I'd probably rank Undercover a notch above 'so-so' (certainly not the next Sticky or Exile as some are saying) ... as for overproduced, I am not sure how one determines that.

It's about taste...

Really?

Not bothering to include the rest - really?

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longlongwinter
'Hits' are often not the best music, just the most digestible and liked by the masses. A discerning ear will draw more to 'Rocks off' vs. a 'Brown Sugar'. When people would say 'I love the Stones' but you could tell they barely broke the surface I would rightly predict the only album they knew was Hot Rocks

There are a lot of singles that are really good/great/etc songs. For example, Brown Sugar.

There are a lot of singles that are awful/horrible/etc songs. For example, We Built This City.

There's no making sense of We Built This City being allowed to be written... but the person that came up with Brown Sugar wrote Let's Work.

That's more bizarre.