“I just cringe”: The lyrics Mick Jagger will always regret
Having a long and enduring career is surely the ultimate goal of any musician. No one wants to be a quick fad or a fleeting trend when it comes to the artistry they put out. Everyone is aiming for the same golden word: ‘timeless’, offering a chance to live forever in the world’s songbook. Few manage it, but for the ones who do, they then have to face up to the downside. Decades on, the lyrics to that song might not feel quite as cool to sing. Just ask Mick Jagger.
It’s inevitable. Even with songs as foolproof as so many songs by The Rolling Stones, as the band truly became a timeless hit-making machine, releasing a new anthem at each turn of their career that would, and would, stick around seemingly forever, elements of it will age. Maybe not in the ears of fans who still hunger to hear the oldies decades on, but imagine having to get up on stage every night and essentially relive your youth via the words you chose to string together.
For more personal or confessional writers, that must be even worse. It must be a unique experiment, or perhaps sometimes even a unique form of torture, to have to still sing songs about emotions or situations from years and years ago. It must feel like being forced to rehash the same page of your diary on repeat.
None of the Stones’ songs are all that tender or distinct. Jagger is luckily largely safe from being forced to confront more revealing moments, as he’s always been able to hide behind the rock and roll. Instead, he often had to face up to his younger self, the antics he was getting up to, and the ways he’d write about them.
In his late 20s and early 30s, the classic language of sex, drugs and rock and roll still thrilled him. Now, age 81, it doesn’t feel quite the same. For some songs, it’s fine as the band’s biggest anthems still feel just the same to perform. But, for some reason, ‘Tumbling Dice’ feels different.
The thing is, the song didn’t even perform all that well when it was released. It spent a fair few weeks in the chart, but never got any higher that number five in the UK or seven in the US. Good positions, sure, but not their best. But for some reason, Stones fans were hooked, meaning that still today, the 1972 single graces their setlists and has now been played live over 1100 times by the group.
Jagger is sick of it, and he was sick of it in 1995. “I don’t really know what people like about it. I don’t think it’s our best stuff,” he told Rolling Stone magazine. People’s love for it baffles him as he added, “I don’t think it has good lyrics. But people seem to really like it,” before adding, “so good for them,” letting his fans have their whims and fancies.
Part of the reason is perhaps that ‘Tumbling Dice’ exists in the Stones’ songbook of classic drug-fuelled anthems. It’s a song about gambling addiction, infidelity and drugs, singing, “Oh my, my, my, I’m the lone crap shooter / Playin’ the field ev’ry night.” Maybe years on, swaggering around the stage putting on the track’s country-like drawl to sing about illicit substances doesn’t creatively feed Jagger in the same way. But mostly, it’s just that, in his words, “Not only the drugs – I just cringe, period.”
