The Rolling Stones album Mick Jagger called “overrated”
Throughout the last 60 years when Mick Jagger has been a member of The Rolling Stones, he’s witnessed it all. During that time, they have been championed as the best band in the world who can do no wrong, revered as rock heroes, and also scrutinised as public villains. However, Jagger knows he can’t control public perception and instead chooses to spend his energy on the elements within his power.
When a band becomes as wildly successful as The Rolling Stones, they become a public commodity in a sense. Therefore, for the sake of his sanity, Jagger doesn’t allow himself to be dragged down by the negative comments in his direction. Nor does the frontman let his ego get drunk on the compliments regarding their work. Instead, he’s steadfast in his own opinion, which can’t be swayed by anyone else.
Due to their extensive career, The Rolling Stones have produced several albums that could be considered their magnum opus. Even Jagger hasn’t outright revealed which record he believes to be their best, but did tell Yahoo of Some Girls: “It’s one of my favourite Stones albums, I think, because it’s so listenable as an album, and it gets to the heart of the matter straight away, and there’s no mucking about, and it’s succinct.”
While Some Girls does have seminal status, in the eyes of most Rolling Stones fans, it’s below Exile On Main St in the pecking order. The latter was recorded during a tumultuous period for the band after they’d become tax exiles, and they desperately needed an emphatic album to get fans back on their side, which they did with aplomb.
Exile On Main St was recorded over an extended period in exotic locations worldwide, including a villa in Nellcóte, France. The double album boasts 18 tracks, and despite its extended length, it never gets tiresome to listen to as a fan. The Stones also fought substance abuse while recording the album, but they struck gold and made a stone-cold classic.
Yet, despite the abundance of love for Exile On Main St, Jagger believes it is underserved. In 1995, Jagger gave a candid interview with Rolling Stone reflecting on his three decades in the music business, and said of the album, “It’s a bit overrated, to be honest.”
Jagger continued: “Compared to Let It Bleed and Beggars Banquet, which I think are more of a piece, I don’t see it’s as thematic as the other two. I’m not saying it’s not good. It doesn’t contain as many outstanding songs as the previous two records.” The singer also had positive remarks about the release, adding: “I think it’s kind of sprawling so that you can always find other little nugget things that you haven’t heard.”
While Jagger does like the record, he just didn’t believe it to be their best work, which is the commonly held perspective. Few people love Exile more than his bandmate, Keith Richards. When asked to pick his favourite track from the album, he once said it was “very difficult for me to pick out one baby from the other” before eventually selecting ‘Tumbling Dice’.
Despite calling it “overrated”, years later, Jagger seemed to reassess his opinion when speaking to The Talks in 2011. “My finest hour,” he proclaimed of Exile. “Well, it is certainly good and certainly it was a very creative period, a really good period. Some very good things came in that period in music.”
Like most creatives, Jagger reassesses his albums over time and seems to have grown to love Exile With Main St more with age. While, at one stage, the singer seemed to almost resent the record’s success, he’s now come around to believing it stands tall among his best work.
