Some Girls by The Rolling Stones

Some Girls, the Rolling Stones' fourteenth album, hit the racks on 9 June 1978 on Rolling Stones Records, and it's the sound of the old rogues getting mad and getting even. By 1976 the Stones were slipping, with disco ruling the dance floors, newer rock bands crowding in and punk kicking up a storm in the UK. So they holed up at Pathé Marconi Studios in Paris from October 1977 to February 1978 and cut a record that answers all of it at once. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards produced it as the Glimmer Twins, with Chris Kimsey engineering, and with Richards caught up in legal troubles, Jagger is usually credited as the main creative force.

It's the first album with Ronnie Wood as a full-time member, after he'd pitched in on It's Only Rock 'n Roll and Black and Blue, and with a steady lineup for once and few guests around, the band plays lean and mean. Jagger, soaking up disco, turns "Miss You" into a slinky, sweat-slicked groove with Sugar Blue's harmonica wailing through it, while "Shattered" is a sneering, jittery rant, "Beast of Burden" is a lazy, loose-limbed ballad, and "Far Away Eyes" is a pure country goof.

It worked on every front. The album went to number one in the US and number two in the UK, and "Miss You" topped the US singles chart. Critics called it their best since Exile on Main St., it became the only Stones album nominated for the Album of the Year Grammy, and by 2000 it had sold six million copies in America, their biggest seller there. The sessions were so productive that outtakes kept turning up on later albums.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.