“Angie” by The Rolling Stones

"Angie", the lead single from Goats Head Soup, the Rolling Stones' eleventh studio album, came out in August 1973, and it's the moment the band put the leer away. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards share the credit, as usual, and they cut it in November and December 1972 with Jimmy Miller producing: an acoustic ballad about a love affair running out of road.

Richards wrote the piano part that drifts around the melody, and Nicky Hopkins, a regular at Stones sessions, plays it on the record with a soft, sorrowful touch, while Nicky Harrison's string arrangement swells in behind. Jagger croons it low and bruised, and if you listen closely you can hear a ghost: his guide vocal, laid down before the real take, murmuring faintly underneath the whole way through. There's no swagger in it anywhere, just a heavy-lidded ache.

The trade papers swooned. Cash Box reckoned Jagger was at his best, slurring his way through every line to wring the feeling out of it, and Record World called it a tender ballad with a vocal both moving and sensuous.

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