“Honky Tonk Woman” by The Rolling Stones

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards cooked up "Honky Tonk Women" on a Brazilian holiday that ran from the end of 1968 into the first days of 1969, staying at a ranch in Matão, São Paulo, where the rural locals, the caipiras, got them going. The Rolling Stones released it in July 1969 as a stand-alone single, Britain first and America a week later, and it went to number one in both.

There were two takes on it: the hit, which swaggers like it owns the bar, and "Country Honk", a countrified blues version with slightly altered words that went onto Let It Bleed. The single later landed on Through the Past, Darkly (Big Hits Vol. 2), and it has since entered the Grammy Hall of Fame and Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest songs of all time.

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