“Shattered” by The Rolling Stones

"Shattered", from the Rolling Stones' 1978 album Some Girls, is New York City in the late '70s boiled down to a nervous twitch: Mick Jagger half-talking, half-spitting his take on American life and the city's neurotic buzz over a choppy Keith Richards riff, with a whiff of the English punk explosion creeping in to keep it mean. Jagger has said he scribbled the words in the back of a New York cab.

Cut between October and December 1977, it has Richards sawing between two chords through a modest phaser, Charlie Watts driving hard, and Ronnie Wood everywhere at once: on guitar, on pedal steel and, with Bill Wyman absent, on bass. Simon Kirke sits in on congas, and Chris Kimsey recorded and mixed it for the Glimmer Twins.

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