Music / Some Girls

"Some girls give me diamonds. Some girls, heart attacks. Some girls I give all my bread to. I don’t ever want it back!"^note The original album artwork before it was edited

Some Girls is the fourteenth studio album (sixteenth American album) by The Rolling Stones, released in 1978. It is generally considered to be (alongside Tattoo You) the last classic Stones album, and marks the first full-length appearance of Ronnie Wood. Songs like "Miss You" and "Beast of Burden" became international hits.

The album is equally known for its cover, featuring the faces of the band members in cut-out heads along with the faces of several famous Hollywood actresses. There are three versions of the cover, as detailed under Alternate Album Cover.

The album reached #1 in the US and #2 in the UK, and received a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year (the only Stones album to do so).

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Tracklist:

Side One

1. "Miss You" (4:48)
2. "When the Whip Comes Down" (4:20)
3. "Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)" (4:38)
4. "Some Girls" (4:36)
5. "Lies" (3:11)

Side Two

1. "Far Away Eyes" (4:24)
2. "Respectable" (3:06)
3. "Before They Make Me Run" (3:25)
4. "Beast of Burden" (4:25)
5. "Shattered" (3:48)

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Tracklist (2011 Bonus Disc):

1. "Claudine" (3:42)
2. "So Young" (3:18)
3. "Do You Think I Really Care?" (4:22)
4. "When You're Gone" (3:51)
5. "No Spare Parts" (4:30)
6. "Don't Be a Stranger" (4:06)
7. "We Had It All" (2:54)
8. "Tallahassee Lassie" (2:37)
9. "I Love You Too Much" (3:10)
10. "Keep Up Blues" (4:20)
11. "You Win Again" (3:00)
12. "Petrol Blues" (1:35)

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Principal Members:

• Mick Jagger - lead vocals, guitar, piano, harmonica
• Keith Richards - guitar, backing and lead vocals, bass, piano
• Charlie Watts - drums
• Ronnie Wood - guitar, vocals, bass, bass drum
• Bill Wyman - bass, synthesizer, marimba

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Tropes Of Burden:

• All Women Are Lustful:
  • "Respectable"
  You're a rag-trade girl, you're the queen of porn
  You're the easiest lay on the White House lawn
  • "Some Girls"
  Black girls just want to get fucked all night
• Alliterative Title: "Beast Of Burden" and "When The Whip Comes Down".
• Alternate Album Cover: The standard cover for Some Girls features the faces of the band members in cut-out heads along with the faces of famous Hollywood actresses. When Lucille Ball, Farrah Fawcett, Liza Minnelli (who didn't appear on the cover, but her late mother Judy Garland did), Raquel Welch, and the Marilyn Monroe estate threatened legal action, the album was quickly reissued with a revised cover that had their faces replaced on the sleeve with a message reading: "Pardon our appearance. Cover under re-construction." A third version removed the censored heads and those of the band members and uses generic faces to make the cover appear like a wig ad.
• Artistic License – History: "Respectable", which describes the band meeting the US President to talk about drugs, which never happened.
  Well, now we're respected in society
  We don't worry about the things that we used to be
  We're talking heroin with the president
• As the Good Book Says...: "Lies"
  Lies, lies, you dirty Jezebel
• The Big Rotten Apple: "Shattered"
  Go ahead, bite the Big Apple. Don't mind the maggots.
• Break Up Song: "Miss You"
  I've been holding out so long
  I've been sleeping all alone
  Lord I miss you
  I've been hanging on the phone
  I've been sleeping all alone
  I want to kiss you
• British Stuffiness: "Some Girls"
  English girls they're so prissy
  I can't stand them on the telephone
  Sometimes I take the receiver off the hook
  I don't want them to ever call at all
• Broken Record and Department of Redundancy Department: "Beast Of Burden"
  Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty girl
  You're a pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty girl
  Pretty, pretty, such a pretty, pretty, pretty girl
• Corrupt Church: "Far Away Eyes"
  Well the preacher kept right on saying that all I had to do was send ten dollars to the church of the sacred bleeding heart of Jesus, located somewhere in Los Angeles, California. And next week they'd say my prayer on the radio. And all my dreams would come true. So I did, the next week, I got a prayer with a girl
• Country Music: "Far Away Eyes" is performed in this style.
• Cover Version: "Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)", originally by The Temptations.
• Design Student's Orgasm: The album cover, designed by Peter Corriston and Hubert Kretzschmar. It took an old cosmetics advertisement and changed some of the faces to both famous women (who sued, hence them being The Blank in reissues) and the Stones in garish drag (the inner gatefold makes it clearer◊). A 1986 reissue just had the original ad with the new text.◊
• Face on the Cover: The band is shown on the album cover, though with their faces in women's heads (with added lipstick). There are other famous faces in the cover, but only George Harrison remains in later prints, as Lucille Ball, Farrah Fawcett, Raquel Welch, Judy Garland's daughter Liza Minnelli (to whom Mick Jagger later apologized) and the estate of Marilyn Monroe sued for unauthorized usage, and thus later reissues feature an Alternate Album Cover with those faces cut out and the gaps filled with the text 'Pardon our appearance – cover under re-construction'.
• Inscrutable Oriental: "Some Girls"
  Chinese girls are so gentle
  They're really such a tease
  You never know quite what they're cookin'
  Inside those silky sleeves
• Misogyny Song: "Some Girls"
  Some girls give me children
  I never asked them for
• Mistaken for Racist: "Some Girls" caused protest among some groups for the supposedly racist lines: "black girls just wanna get fucked all night" and "Chinese girls are so gentle,they are such a tease". Jagger commented it was just meant as a parody, a fact Saturday Night Live comedian Garrett Morris commented on:
  Mr. Mick Jagger, where ARE these black girls? You got any phone numbers?!?
• My Country Tis of Thee That I Sting: "Some Girls"
  English girls they're so prissy
  I can't stand them on the telephone
  Sometimes I take the receiver off the hook
  I don't want them to ever call at all
• National Stereotypes: "Some Girls"
  French girls they want Cartier
  Italian girls want cars
  American girls want everything in the world
  You can possibly imagine
  English girls they're so prissy
  I can't stand them on the telephone
  Sometimes I take the receiver off the hook
  I don't want them to ever call at all
  White girls they're pretty funny
  Sometimes they drive me mad
  Black girls just wanna get fucked all night
  I just don't have that much jam
  Chinese girls are so gentle
  They're really such a tease
  You never know quite what they're cookin'
  Inside those silky sleeves
• New Sound Album: Particularly the Disco song "Miss You" and the Punk Rock songs "Respectable" and "Shattered".
• Ode to Intoxication: "Before They Make Me Run", where Richards is unapologetic about being busted for drug possession:
  Gonna find my way to heaven, `cause I did my time in hell
  I wasn't looking too good but I was feeling real well
  After all is said and done
  I gotta move I had my fun
  Let us walk before they make me run
• One-Man Song: "When The Whip Comes Down" is sang from the perspective of a homosexual man.
  Yeah, mama and papa told me I was crazy to stay
  I was gay in New York, I was a faggot in L.A.
  So I saved my money and took the plane
  Wherever I go, they just treat me the same.
• One-Woman Song: "Claudine".
• One-Word Title:"Lies", "Shattered" and "Respectable".
• Packaged as Other Medium: The cover is designed to look like an advertisement.
• The Parody: In "Far Away Eyes" Jagger imitates the accent of someone from The Deep South:
  I was driving home early Sunday morning through Bakersfield
  Listening to gospel music on the coloured radio station
  And the preacher said, 'You know, you always have the Lord by your side
  And I was so pleased to be informed of this, that I ran 20 red lights in His honour
  Thank you Jesus, thank you Lord.
• The Power of Love: "Just My Imagination"
  Dear Lord, hear my plea
  Don't ever let another take her love from me or I will surely die
• Product Placement: "Some Girls"
  French girls, they want "Cartier"
• Real Life Writes the Plot: "Before They Make Me Run" is written by Keith Richards and reflects his arrest for heroin possession in Toronto, Canada in 1977.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: "Lies"
  Lies, dripping off your mouth like dirt
  Lies, lies in every step you walk
  Lies, whispered sweetly in my ear
  Lies, how do I get out of here?
• Shout-Out: The original cover layout shows the band members' faces cut-and-paste super-imposed over famous Hollywood actresses' faces. We can recognize Marilyn Monroe, Farrah Fawcett, Judy Garland, Raquel Welch, Eartha Kitt, Lucille Ball, Brigitte Bardot and Elizabeth Taylor. This backfired when Fawcett, Ball, Welch, the Monroe estate and Liza Minnelli on behalf of her late mother Judy Garland threatened legal action, forcing the album to be withdrawn and the cover altered for all subsequent pressings and reissues.
• Something Blues: The bonus tracks "Keep Up Blues" and "Petrol Blues".
• Spicy Latinas: The "Puerto Rican girls who are just dying to meet you" in "Miss You."
• Spoken Word in Music: "Miss You" and "Far Away Eyes" both feature a spoken word section.
• Step Up to the Microphone: Keith Richards sings lead on "Before They Make Me Run", as well as the bonus track "We Had It All".
• Take That, Critics!: Some Girls was a very deliberate response to critics who had dismissed them as outdated in the face of Punk Rock and disco. It paid off big time both critically and commercially, and the Stones pointed out that numerous punk rockers had grown up listening to them. It's also helped that they've absorbed many different music styles over the years, while still retaining their core blues-rock sound.
• Title Track: "Some Girls".
• Yiddish as a Second Language: "Shattered" includes a Yiddish term for tattered or ragged garments in its lyrics.
  All this chitter-chatter, chitter-chatter, chitter-chatter 'bout
  Shmatta, shmatta, shmatta — I can't give it away on 7th Avenue

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