The 50 greatest Rolling Stones songs The Beatles might've been the first band to make landfall in the 1960s British Invasion, but their prominence was immediately challenged by dozens of groups from across the pond eager to do it bigger and better than the Fab Four. The Rolling Stones weren't bigger than The Beatles in their prime, but they were certainly badder. They were the punk kids who slipped through the upstairs window at night with a bottle of booze and a pack of cigarettes. They were incorrigible. And unlike The Beatles, the Stones managed their internal disputes and kept churning out new music into the 2000s. So if you're looking to single out their fifty greatest songs, you have a lot to choose from. Most of the songs on this list come from the 1960s and '70s, but they recorded plenty of essential music throughout the 1980s (and the occasional knockout in the 1990s). This is a daunting task, but like a classic Stones track, it builds to a righteous conclusion.
50. "Happy" (1972) That tinny guitar lick provides a slightly off-key prelude to the unique pleasure of listening to Keith Richards sing. The long-running joke about Keith’s whiskey-and-cigarettes-scorched voice is that he can sing melody and harmony at the same time. If you’ve ever been to a Stones show before, you know that nothing gets the crowd going like Keith stepping up to the microphone to blast out “Happy”.
49. "Get Off of My Cloud" (1965) The Stones quickly learned that the music industry waits for no one when their label started hounding them for a follow-up to “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”). This was their response, a petulantly surreal (“I live in an apartment on the ninety-ninth floor of my block”) companion piece to the advertising-averse hit that made them international recording sensations. It did the trick (the song hit number one on the Billboard charts), but it really does sound like a talented band buying time.
48. "The Last Time" (1965) This is a lightweight single with a helluva hook – a hook so irresistible it turned The Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony” into a hit thirty years later. The original lineup of the Stones bangs this out proficiently. It’s a song about a cad threatening a reliable hookup with abstention. It’s a bad boy’s dream, and it rarely plays out the way the narrator of this song thinks it will.
47. "2,000 Light Years from Home" (1967) The Stones flirted with psychedelia like the rest of their ‘60s peers, but it just wasn’t their bag. While The Beatles were hitting new heights (and highs) with “Revolver” and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, Mick and the gang undertook “Their Satanic Majesties Request”, which didn’t have anywhere near the same impact. It’s an artistic failure, but there are a few great songs on it, including this wildly expansive track that lets Brian Jones show off his musical versatility. The Stones played this both times I saw them live, and it feels like a tribute to Jones. This was right at the moment he began to drift away from the band and into addiction; he was a key component to their sound, and then he was gone.