The Rolling Stones album that disappointed Mick Jagger
Every band will want to put their best foot forward whenever they walk into the studio. While success might be excellent for a while, going back into the studio trying to outdo what you’ve already made is always the ultimate challenge, with artists twisting their usual formula in different directions. When working in the music business for as long as The Rolling Stones have, though, there will always be some albums that don’t necessarily cut it.
Then again, The Rolling Stones practically paved their unique lane since their debut. Even though they may have been looked at as the edgy version of The Beatles by some fans, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were responsible for broadening the spectrum of traditional rock and roll. They toyed with everything from baroque pop to psychedelic rock while always finding time to come back to the blues.
After the band finished their classic period in the 1970s, the MTV generation saw them drastically changing their sound to fit the times. Clad in neon-coloured clothes and performing the most lacklustre songs of their career, albums like Dirty Work saw the group at a low point. All of this led to a wilderness period where the band went on hiatus, and Richards and Jagger cut their solo material.
By the time they got back on track during the late 1980s, they had started to get acquainted with what made them want to play music in the first place. Arriving right in the middle of the grunge revolution, Voodoo Lounge represents the band getting on top of their game again, with songs like ‘You Got Me Rocking’ showing them trying to make something more grizzly than what had come before.
For all of the glitzy fashion in the previous decade, The Stones were already more suited to the back-to-basics look of the 1990s. Considering that Exile on Main St had the same aura as the bands from Seattle, they managed to catch a second wind. This resulted in them going in even more creative directions when working on their next album, Bridges to Babylon.
Even though the band may have seen decent success from the record, Jagger thought the final product didn’t have the same punch as the rest of the group’s catalogue. While Jagger may have liked many of the songs on the album, he thought that producer Don Was may have overstuffed the album because the runtime ballooned to over an hour.
Looking back on how they arranged it, Jagger recalled, “He tried to remake Exile on Main Street or something like that. Plus, the engineer was also trying to do the same thing. Their mindset about it was just too retro. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it inherently, but they went over the top; they’d gone too far.”
Considering where the band was at the end of the 1980s, though, Voodoo Lounge shows them getting back in touch with their roots again, including Richards turning in one of his best lead vocals on the song ‘The Worst’. Voodo Lounge may have been a bit too nostalgic for Jagger’s taste, but fans probably needed to hear a Stones album that sounded like them after enduring singles like ‘Harlem Shuffle’.
