Some Girls
One of the many things done correctly in Martin Scorsese's 2008 Rolling Stones concert film "Shine a Light" was to present the band playing a set-list of some of their best songs, rather than the awful tripe the "world's greatest rock band" has elected to put on their last few studio albums. Not only did the song selection show the band in a light more flattering than their dinosaurian performance at the 2006 Super Bowl halftime show, it also demonstrated the vitality of the group's music decades after it was released, as well as the Stones themselves.
Some of the choicest cuts from "Shine a Light" were performances of numbers from "Some Girls," the Stones' last truly classic album.
Released in 1978, "Girls" was the band's answer to the burgeoning punk movement's accusations that "big" rock groups such as the Stones, Led Zeppelin, etc. were becoming bloated by fame, and their music was suffering as a result. The Stones' lead singer, Mick Jagger, endeavored to prove the young upstarts wrong, adapting popular musical trends like punk and disco and fusing the styles with the most alternately contemplative and caustic lyrics of the Stones' career.
Songs like the album-opener, "Miss You," demonstrate how successful this blend is, aping the stomping beat of a classic dance number while the words are classic blues-rock, describing the singer's lament over a girlfriend leaving his life. Similar lyrical preoccupations are found easily throughout the album, from the country-tinged satirical ballad "Far Away Eyes" to the pining soul sound of "Beast of Burden;" as the title suggests, women and their wiles play a major role in most of the album's tunes.
"Girls" possesses a bizarre balance of acidic and reflective lyrics, a combination unavailable on any other Stones studio effort. Even albums with well-known introspective numbers, like "Moonlight Mile" on "Sticky Fingers" or "Shine a Light" on "Exile on Main St.," are not as thoughtful as "Girls," while records by the band with popular "kiss-off" numbers ? "Bitch" on "Fingers," "Star Star" on "Goats Head Soup," etc. ? fail to be as harsh as the material here. All of the songs demonstrate a hyper-awareness of the pleasures and pains of fame, and the lone cover on the album, the Temptations' "Imagination," becomes a funk-inflected number about the longing and loneliness of a dreamer that fits in perfectly with the rest of the album's analysis of isolation.
That said, not all of the tracks on "Girls" are all weighty and inward-looking. The title song is a brutal list of grievances against alluring women and their material wants, while two lines from "Lies" truly express everything one might want to say upon being cuckolded: "Lies ? lies you dirty Jezebel/ Why, why, why, why don't you go to hell?"
Album-closer "Shattered," however, perhaps best sums up the attitude of the record in its final line: "Pile it up, pile it high on the platter." The Stones certainly "piled it" on listeners in the '70s with their account of the temptations of fame and the angst of city living. "Shattered" is just one of four songs on "Girls" focusing on New York City, demonstrating the band's state of mind during the record's composition. Thankfully, the Stones also piled ten great songs on this album, adding another classic record to their formidable collection while closing out a decade of their strongest work with one of their best outings.