‘THE (The Hardest Ever)’: Mick Jagger’s most disastrous collaboration
The 1970s witnessed a rapid change in The Rolling Stones. Across about four years, a strange transformation strikes frontman Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards. In 1972, they were firing on all cylinders, closing the Stones’ golden era with the raw and rootsy Exile on Main St and the biggest band on the planet. Across the mid-decade doldrums, the seeds of the caricatures began to sprout as their work began to move away from their former vitality toward the corporate stadium behemoth that still grinds away to this day.
Despite Jagger’s emerging chicken neck strut, which would come to stand as his defining on-stage move, the songs were still great. Black and Blue boasts seriously underrated cuts. It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll isn’t all that interesting, but features the concert staple title track. Some Girls heralds their great return, later tapping into lost magic with 1981’s Tattoo You and pushing the band to the fore of the MTV age.
‘Start Me Up’ is their crucial artistic pivot, however. While 1983’s Undercover is overlooked, the Stones begin resting on their laurels and are powered by their heritage from then on. Alongside their lapse into Stones Inc – a perfect labelling of operations since their comeback from the Robert’s Record Corner YouTube series – Jagger fancied himself as a solo pop star to the near disintegration of his day job band.
If cartoon parody had been hinted at on ‘Hot Stuff’, by 1985, Jagger had divebombed into high-camp with She’s the Boss, naturally joining forces in a whirlwind of gash for the equally creatively bereft David Bowie on the atrocious cover of Martha & The Vandellas’ ‘Dancing in the Streets’ two years later.
It’s a tough call as to Jagger’s worst collaboration. While ‘Dancing in the Streets’ is bad, bad, bad, its saving grace is two friends having a good time and caught up in the mania of the late 1980s, if we’re being charitable. The SuperHeavy electro reggae supergroup with Dave Stewart, Joss Stone and Damian Marley was just boring, and the oft-forgotten feature on The Jacksons’ ‘State of Shock’ merely a generic phoney-rock stomper without a vestige of Thriller‘s pop ingenuity.
His most disastrous partnership has to be 2011’s ‘THE (The Hardest Ever)’. A flashy EDM number by Black Eyed Peas‘ Will.i.am and featuring guest vocals from Jennifer Lopez and production assistance from Interscope’s Jimmy Iovine, the sci-fi dance mess seems to just throw everything into its glossy, dull pop busyness as if an excuse for the central rapper to don his space pyjamas and fuck about in his CGI stunt and space video.
Will.i.am at this time had the dubious distinction of releasing a single that was steadily worse than the last for a good five years. It started badly with the cloying ‘Where Is the Love?’, and before you knew it ‘My Humps’ and the infuratingly dismal ‘I Gotta Feeling’ stubbornly clogged the charts. ‘THE (The Hardest Ever)’ takes a marginal step back from utter insipidity, but it’s not saying much. It’s crunchy electro riff grates, plinky drum beats lack character, and Jagger’s vocals feel recorded with little awareness of the vehicle his takes were destined for.
Perhaps it seemed like a good idea at the time? Jagger’s always been the contemporary force in The Rolling Stones, keeping an ear to the ground with music’s trends, countering Richards’ veneration for rock’s authentic roots, so he likely knew exactly what he signed up for. It was never going to end well though; Will.i.am, one of the 21st century’s most irritating artists, managing to subsume one of the 20th century’s greatest into his sonic stamp of tuneless pap.
