The five best Rolling Stones songs sung by Keith Richards
While Mick Jagger often takes the majority of the plaudits for being the charismatic frontman in The Rolling Stones, you shouldn’t underestimate the importance of Keith Richards to the group. His guitar playing was such a vital characteristic of the group’s output, and his ability to pen songs alongside Jagger shouldn’t be ignored either.
However, what Richards is less known for during his long tenure with the British rock group are his vocal contributions, and having offered his voice to two dozen Stones tracks since the 1960s, it’s not exactly a frequent occurrence for him to be placed behind the microphone. That being said, when he did step up in place of Jagger, he would often provide a startling alternative to the outright bravado that the main man was known to exude.
Having dueted with Jagger on a handful of songs in the late ‘60s, such as ‘Something Happened to Me Yesterday’ and ‘Connection’ on Between the Buttons, and singing the opening verse to ‘Salt of the Earth’ that closes out Beggars Banquet, Richards would finally get his first opportunity to take on lead vocal duties in 1969 when the band released Let It Bleed.
As noted, it was rare for Richards to get more than a couple of songs per album where he could exercise his vocal cords, but even to this day, he still contributes lead vocals to songs on the band’s records, having taken up duties for ‘Tell Me Straight’ on the band’s latest effort, 2023’s Hackney Diamonds.
With 24 instances to choose from, we’ve whittled them all down to a top five songs that feature Keith on lead vocals, relegating his old pal Mick to the background or even outside of the room in some cases.
Keith Richards’s five best vocal performances:
5. ‘Thief in the Night/How Can I Stop?’ – Bridges To Babylon
It might feel a little bit cheeky to start a top five list with two songs (ultimately making it a top six), but the closing tracks from the group’s 1997 album Bridges To Babylon run from one into the other, with ‘How Can I Stop?’ feeling like an extension of ‘Thief in the Night’ that comes before it. While the more recent efforts in the Rolling Stones’ catalogue are often met with mixed reactions from listeners, Bridges To Babylon felt like an honest attempt to create a record that fused both the band’s classic sound with a contemporary feel.
While Richards’ other vocal contribution to the album is the lacklustre reggae pastiche ‘You Don’t Have to Mean It’, the other two tracks see the guitarist embrace what he does best. ‘Thief in the Night’ is a slow-burning blues track that was penned by his long-time guitar tech Pierre de Beauport and has Richards bring out his most gravelly rock vocals over the top of a jam that fuses together R&B and gospel influences. Closer ‘How Can I Stop?’ is a far more subdued ballad, and while you can hear the occasional strain in Richards’ voice, it feels like an honest and sentimental track from an elder statesman of rock.
4. ‘Coming Down Again’ – Goats Head Soup
Another slice of wonderful balladry from the craziest member of the Stones, ‘Coming Down Again’ is a brief respite from the overall heaviness and mania of Goats Head Soup. However, the song’s subject matter is far from light material. Given the guitarist’s proclivity for drug-fuelled misadventure, the ‘coming down’ referenced in the song’s title is unsurprisingly about the after-effects of his heroin use and the sombre way in which he repeats the refrain “all my time’s been spent coming down again” throughout the chorus is heartbreaking to see.
This is an honest reflection and realisation of how dependent he was on illicit substances and how they were negatively impacting his personal life in the early ‘70s. There are references to his on-off relationship with Anita Pallenberg and how it was on the rocks due to his affairs. There are also nods to the loneliness and isolation he felt at the time, both as a result of his heroin use causing him to be distant from his loved ones and due to the recent deaths of some of his closest accomplices, such as Gram Parsons, who died from a drug overdose.
3. ‘All About You’ – Emotional Rescue
By the time the band released Emotional Rescue in 1980, Richards had already begun to clean up his act and cut back on his drug and alcohol intake, but that caused more than a few fractures in his relationship with Mick Jagger. With Richards wishing to take on more responsibility from Jagger now he wasn’t spending all of his time strung out and incapacitated, Jagger resented his bandmate getting too involved in the band’s business affairs and started to shut him out.
While many might interpret the subject of this song to have been Pallenberg once again, Richards made it clear several years later that he had written it about the strained relationship with Jagger and the resentment they harboured for one another. Despite there being countless negative lines in the song that suggest an imminent breakdown in their relationship, he ends the song with a poignant question: “So how come I’m still in love with you?”
2. ‘You Got The Silver’ – Let it Bleed
Putting on his best Bob Dylan impression for this short but sweet acoustic number, Richards’ first solo lead vocal for the band sits towards the end of their 1969 masterpiece Let It Bleed, and while it often gets forgotten about among the glut of hits on the record, it stands tall as being one of his finest contributions to the band.
There’s some masterful acoustic slide guitar accompaniment backing Richards up on his raw vocal performance, and for his debut effort as lead vocalist with the group, there’s a remarkable assuredness and confidence in his delivery that begs the question of why he hadn’t contributed more vocals for the band before that point. In truth, Richards claims that he only took it on by himself in an effort to “spread the workload,” so there could have been a world where one of his finest moments was taken away from him and treated as a duet with Jagger.
1. ‘Happy’ – Exile on Main Street
The biggest hit that Richards ever recorded vocals for with the Stones, ‘Happy’ was a raw rock number typical of the rest of Exile on Main Street and one that epitomises the soulfulness he would so often provide for the band. Screaming into the microphone with just as much vigour as Jagger would have done, ‘Happy’ is a riotous blues number that Richards recorded alongside session musicians and the band’s producer, Jimmy Miller, while the rest of the band were away from the studio, but it feels every bit as much like an authentic Stones effort.
Taking all of the classic blues tropes of being down and out, broke and wanting to drown your sorrows, ‘Happy’ is Richards’ best effort with the group, and that was reflected in its chart performance, which saw it reach number 22, higher than any other song he sang with the group. Speaking about the song, Richards previously claimed: “That’s a strange song, because if you play it you actually become happy, even in the worst of circumstances. It has a little magical bounce about it.” It certainly lifts spirits, and if Keith is looking for anything else to be happy about, then let it be known that this is his finest vocal contribution to the Rolling Stones.
