The Rolling Stones song Angus Young called timeless: “That’s what counts”
Surely, the aim of any artist is to make something timeless. Not something so placid that it simply won’t bother anyone if it sticks around, being just nice enough to slip through time inoffensively. But something truly and utterly timeless will sound just as electrifying and just as fresh in decades time as it does on the day its made. According to Angus Young, The Rolling Stones have pulled it off with one track especially being carved into the golden songbook of history.
No artist wants to feel like their work is fleeting. Especially in this modern age of social media trends and musical fads, we’re all very accustomed to seeing artists emerge and rise quickly, capture the zeitgeist and be surrounded by hype for a song or two, and then fade away the second people’s heads are turned by the next shiny new thing. But even before that, one-hit wonders are not a new thing, as there is a long lineage of acts that only ever managed to break through very briefly.
It could be argued that one-hit wonders are still timeless, but it’s in a different way. Often, they’re more signs of their times, capturing the sound of a scene as a select moment. True timelessness is something different – it goes beyond eras, genres, and historical moments. True timelessness only happens when a song rises above all that, managing to be so endlessly good and so enduringly exciting that whether it’s your first listen or your 1000th, it still sounds new and just as captivating as it did the first moment you heard it.
AC/DC’s Angus Young totally gets this. “If you look back over the charts, you could discover that ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ might have been number eight when it came out, and the song right next to it on the charts might have been ‘YMCA’ by the Village People, you know? But which one had the staying power?” he said. Obviously, the two songs weren’t ever in a chart battle, being separated by a decade, but his point rings true.
‘YMCA’ is a novelty song. It’s still played today, yes, but only ever really as a joke or a childhood nostalgia trip. Whereas ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ is still played because it’s a great song. It’s a rock and roll song that people still love and still want to hear; not yet tired of the track despite it being released way back in 1968. It’s a whole different ball game as the Village People created an anthem for their era, whereas Mick Jagger and Keith Richards created an anthem that transcends theirs.
“The Rolling Stones can still get on stage and play ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ with all credibility, and that’s what counts,” Young summarised. In fact, the track exists as the song the band have played most out of any of their material. Throughout their career, they’ve performed the song over 1200 times, and it remains a staple part of their live set today, with fans worldwide of all generations hungering to hear the track.
For Young, and for any artist looking to enjoy an enduring career, that’s the blueprint to meet. AC/DC did it in their own way, as tracks like ‘Highway To Hell’ and ‘Back In Black’ certainly exist in the same god-tier realm of the timeless classics.
