“Gimme Shelter” by The Rolling Stones

"Gimme Shelter" opens Let It Bleed, the Rolling Stones' 1969 album, and it opens it like a storm rolling in. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote it, Jimmy Miller produced it, and they aimed it squarely at the horrors of war: killing, rape and fear, set out without a flicker of comfort.

Richards's guitar shivers in on a spooky, echoing figure, Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman lock into a relentless roll, Nicky Hopkins adds piano and Jagger blows harmonica over the top. Then Merry Clayton, the American singer brought in as a guest, takes the song away from everybody, her voice cracking and soaring until the whole record seems to be shaking. Glyn Johns engineered, with Miller adding percussion.

Greil Marcus, reviewing it for Rolling Stone when it came out, said the band had never done anything better, and the verdict has held: the magazine ranked it 13th on its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2021.

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