“I Can't Get No Satisfaction” by The Rolling Stones

"(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" is the Rolling Stones in one riff. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote it, and it's Richards' guitar hook, a snarling figure that kicks the song off and drives it all the way home, that has come to be seen as one of the greatest in rock history. In America it first came out as a single and then on the US version of their third album, Out of Our Heads.

Jagger spits out the verses like a man fed up with everything: the commercial hard sell all around him, and above all his own frustrated libido. The groove is relentless and nagging, a song that never resolves its itch, and that's exactly the point.

It gave the Stones their first number one in the US and later their fourth in the UK, where at first only the pirate stations would play it because the words were thought too sexually suggestive. Rolling Stone placed it at No. 2 on its 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list in 2004, it entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998, and the Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry in 2006.

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