In the mid-80s, The Rolling Stones weren't doing so well. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Ronnie Wood performed at Live Aid, but not together. Jagger performed a set of solo material, while Richards and Woods accompanied Bob Dylan.
Fans who thought this was strange couldn’t have known half of it. The Rolling Stones were, at the time, working on the album Dirty Work, and during these sessions, all five members were rarely present at the same time. Relations between Jagger and Richards were at an all-time low. Unsurprisingly, they did not tour Dirty Work.
Three years later, The Stones made a surprise comeback with Steel Wheels. But in a way, Dirty Work had still been the end for the Stones. Steel Wheels was the first album they made as a legacy act, old legends past their glory days, but still able to belt out the old hits for football stadium-sized audiences, but not really making earth-shattering albums.
Dirty Work was assumed to be The Rolling Stones’ swansong
The Stones went on to make six post-comeback albums, including Steel Wheels. I’m fascinated by old rockers’ late-period albums. What do people with the Rolling Stones’ talent and resources do when they're too famous for anyone to tell them "no," and no one’s really listening to the new stuff anyway?
Blue and Lonesome (2016)
As you may have guessed, I intended this as a straightforward worst-to-best ranking, but these albums resist such a ranking. Except for one, none of these albums is completely bad or completely good.
Exhibit A in why these albums just can’t be ranked in any way that makes sense. Blue and Lonesome was, until recently, the completely good late-period Rolling Stones album. There are no duds here. Blue and Lonesome is the Stones firing on all cylinders, doing what they do best, and proving that they’re still a force to be reckoned with. It’s probably the best-received album among this lot, and I won’t argue.
But it’s also the only one without any moments of wild experimentation or mad genius. As a result, it’s the one I enjoyed the least. Blue and Lonesome is the Stones' first album to consist entirely of covers, blues covers by the likes of Howlin’ Wolf, Lightnin’ Slim, and Little Walter, to be exact. They’re right in their element, but nothing here is particularly memorable. Whenever I try to think about the content of this album, all I hear is the Stones' version of Howlin’ Wolf’s "Little Baby" from 1995’s unplugged album Stripped.
The best song on Blue and Lonesome is Jimmy Reed’s "Little Rain." Though it’s still not particularly memorable. It builds from a slow burn to an assured haunting wail. Little Rain is a change of pace, from the lively honking blues that surrounds it.
So, what makes Blue and Lonesome so good, if it’s so forgettable? Well, it’s that sense of assuredness. When listening to old rockers’ late-period works, there’s always the nervous feeling that you’re about to hear something that’s so embarrassing to their legacy that it makes you fear aging yourself. But Blue and Lonesome is the Stones proving that they’re more than worthy of their impressive legacy.
Blue and Lonesome doesn’t overstay its welcome, which is a refreshing change of pace, as you’ll see.
Hackney Diamonds (2023)
As Rolling Stome memorably put it, "It's 2023, and the Rolling Stones Have Made a Record You'll Want to Play More Than Once -- Seriously." Their incredulous review went on to call "Hackney Diamonds" A collection of bangers... that nobody in their right mind had a right to expect." The question of what changed for the now-threesome, and how Hackney Diamonds came out so good will be the defining debate of 2023.
Perhaps Hackney Diamonds is ever so slightly more inconsistent than Blue and Lonesome because of exactly one filler song, and a few more moments that veer close to filler territory. But it's the best Rolling Stones album of the comeback era by many orders of magnitude.
What's stranger than Hackney Diamonds being as good as it is, is the fact that it kinda feels like the rest of the comeback era never happened. There were certain tropes and cliches of the comeback era that mostly aren't on Hackney Diamonds. It's like an alternate history of the last thirty-five years of the Rolling Stones. For what may be the last Rolling Stones album, they hit the reset button.
Hackney Diamonds has quite a few highlights, starting with the single and first track, "Angry," a song that makes a statement that the Stones have more energy than anyone would expect, and is beautifully simple. The rest of the album is a showcase of the Stones' strengths, with another highlight being the Lady Gaga and Stevie Wonder-assisted "Sweet Sound of Heaven," a showstopper that elevates Hackney Diamonds from consistently good to excellent.
Steel Wheels (1989)
The Rolling Stones really painted themselves into a corner with their eclecticism. The standard formula for a comeback is a return to the basics. But what would a return to the basics look like for the band who did everything from blues to psychedelia to disco to country to reggae and even put their best country song in the middle of their disco album? The Stones have been struggling with that question ever since their comeback began. The answer on Steel Wheels was to try a little of everything, while always returning to well-worn grooves and familiar riffs.
Steel Wheels’ strength is its willingness to hearken back to the Stones’ past. Its weakness is the fact that it defaults to a sort of non-descript mid-tempo rock sound, with just enough funk to satisfy people who get sore muscles from listening to George Clinton. That sound is unmistakably the Stones, yet it sounds like nothing from their heyday and has been their default sound ever since, with ever-diminishing returns.
But that default sound was still fresh then and produced a few good songs. "Between A Rock And A Hard Place" is about the best song that formula could have ever produced; it still sounds fresh. While "Continental Drift," with its "Sympathy For The Devil," energy is the mad genius experimental moment.
The other formula that Steel Wheels established was the Keith Richards soft rock ballad. Keith Richards frequently gets to sing lead vocals on one or two tracks, but before Steel Wheels, they were always dirty, sleazy blues rockers like "Happy" or "Before They Make Me Run" or Twangy blues ballads like "You Got The Silver." Steel Wheels ends with "Slippin’ Away," a soft meditative number that benefits from the sincerity of Richards’ voice. "Slippin’ Away" works well, but that same formula would be hit-and-miss going forward. Steel Wheels is pretty good, despite a lot of filler. Its biggest problem is that it set templates that got them stuck in a rut on later releases.
Bridges to Babylon (1997)
Conventional wisdom says that old acts should not chase trends. What’s trendy now will be dated in five years, but if the act has lasted long enough to become an old act, then their old sound must be timeless. "Bridges to Babylon" is actually a good argument for trend-chasing. Yes, trends from 1997 sounded horribly dated five years later, but in 2023, they sound retro, in the same way that trends from 1972 sound retro. Yes, old is best, but everything gets old eventually.
Bridges to Babylon chased trends; that was criticized at the time, but those criticisms seem shortsighted now. Especially when compared to the other albums on this list, Bridges to Babylon’s strength is how it’s willing to try new things.
It’s baby steps, though. Bridges to Babylon begins with "Flick The Switch," a generic rocker that holds the distinction of being the first Rolling Stones song on which they sound old. Sounding old can work, but "Flick The Switch" doesn’t because it is trying too hard to show these youngins how it’s done.
The second track, "Anyone Seen My Baby?" is a 180-degree turnaround improvement. It’s a little overproduced, but it’s pretty exciting to hear a hip-hop sample in a Rolling Stones song. They hedged their bets putting the bars by Biz Markie low in the mix, so it provides texture while avoiding a really awkward moment.
"Gunface" and "Might As Well Get Juiced" hit you with their originality. They sound nothing like The Rolling Stones, more like progressive EDM stalwarts Underworld, and they’re the funniest moments on these five albums. Even if they don’t work for you, you’ve got to appreciate the miracle of the Rolling Stones making music that sounds modem in the 90s.
But then there’s "Already Over Me," and "Always Suffering," which are the same song twice. It’s an okay song, but it was better when it was called "Fool To Cry."
The nadir is "You Don’t Have To Mean It." Keith Richards introduced reggae to the Stones' repertoire in 1986 with "Too Rude," the highlight from the lost years. "Too Rude" is a loving homage to the genre from an outsider, but "You Don’t Have To Mean It" is the aural equivalent of an offensive rastaman Halloween costume that comes with a giant inflatable doobie.
Voodoo Lounge (1994)
Now we’re really getting into the meaning of the term "inconsistent." Voodoo Lounge is by no means a bad album, but it’s the first Stones album to feature bad songs. Not just a bit ho-hum, or uninspired, but bad, really bad; and not just one bad song, but many.
It also features really good songs too which is why you cannot describe it as a bad album. Reading between the lines, my guess is that after being at the top of their game for thirty years, the Stones had just lost all ability to critically assess their songs or to edit an album down to just the killer tracks. That’s the only way to explain the variance in quality seen here, though that variance would only get more extreme in their next few albums.
According to Mick Jagger, producer Don Was encouraged them away from experimentation so Voodoo Lounge doesn’t get too crazy. But still, its best moments are when the Stones try something new, like the catchy syncopated call-and-response chorus on "Suck On The Jugular" or the stately loud-quiet-loud dynamic on the Richards ballad "Thru and Thru," which is the album’s highlight.
The moments of greatness are truly great, but then there’s the really bad stuff. It’s the lyrics that really let Voodoo Lounge down. A sense of self-awareness might have made lyrics like “Sparks will fly/Sharks will cry” come off as surreal and goofy, like something Beck would write, but when Mick Jagger mixes metaphors so badly that he’s telling his lover that her “oil… smells like caviar,” it’s impossible to think of these songs as being written with any awareness.
With this huge variance in the quality of the songs, I am trying to judge these albums by their best song, not by their worst, but "Sweethearts Together" is a song so bad it kinda ruins the album. Again, it’s the lyrics, which are so lazy, they’re beyond parody. And the riff is an exact copy of 1969’s classic "Let It Bleed," making it an even bigger crime.
A Bigger Bang (2005)
My theory that the Rolling Stones simply don’t know how to critically assess or edit their music is the only way to explain A Bigger Bang. A Bigger Bang has to contain every tune, melody, riff, couplet, quatrain, fever dream, and fart Jagger and Richards had produced in the previous eight years. And that variance in quality reaches the level of a joke. You could remove the five worst songs from this A Bigger Bang, and you’d have the best Stones album since Some Girls; or remove the five best songs, and you’d have an album so frighteningly lazy and incompetent that it would jeopardize the Stones’ legacy.
Both albums would still be on the long side. ‘
A Bigger Bang kicks off with "Rough Justice," which is like a repeat of "Flick The Switch," but with the kinks ironed out. "Rough Justice" is raw and unselfconscious, coming in the middle of the whole garage rock revival that was happening at the time, the Stones actually were showing the youngins how it’s done.
On A Bigger Bang, the Stones finally embrace their age. Their experimentation isn’t for the purpose of raging against the passage of time, which gives the good songs an air of maturity or at least self-awareness. "Back Of My Hand" is a genre experiment that wholly and successfully commits to its genre (raw twangy blues) rather than throwing a bunch of elements at the wall, and it really is excellent, my favorite song post-comeback song. "Laugh, I Nearly Died" and "Sweet Neocon" are the other highlights, and they couldn’t have happened if the Stones hadn’t embraced being adult-oriented rock.
"Sweet Neocon" is a political protest song that could not have been written by anyone younger than middle age. It’s not the fire and brimstone rage usually associated with protest music. Sometimes it overreaches with lyrics that sound like Politico headlines in iambic pentameter, but the precision is exhilarating.
The bad songs have the decency to be flamboyantly bad, giving the impression that everyone involved knows how bad they are. One of them is even called "Biggest Mistake," a ballad about how Mick Jagger regrets his womanizing ways. There is no way "Biggest Mistake" isn’t an elaborate prank.
The closing track, "Infamy," actually is a joke, the title is a pun. It sounds like a 90s sitcom theme or something that Robbie Williams would be furiously trying to shove down the memory hole. Keith Richards, who sings this one, must be the world’s worst poker player because he just can’t manage to not sound bored and irritated by it.
Shortly after wrapping up the Bigger Bang World Tour, Richards fell out of a coconut tree in Fiji and had to be taken to New Zealand for emergency surgery. Whenever it occurs to me that The Rolling Stones' worst song was nearly also their last song, I feel compelled to listen to Sticky Fingers on repeat for about four days before I can face the world again.