Track Review: Rolling Stones

There's a million and one Rolling Stones songs and a billion and one things that have been said about them, so I'm going to keep this short and away from the pulpit.

"Moonlight Mile", from the Stones' Sticky Fingers album, fills me with a wistful kind of sadness. Normally I would be repelled by songs with more than a minute of orchestral strings and piano, thinking it was bloated and a self-indulgent move on the artist's part so he could hear his grandiose thoughts come to life on the radio or whatever. But this song creates a cold wonderland with the soaring, wandering arrangements where even Keith Richards gets elegant; it turns into an end-of-the-road journey in song where we see Mick Jagger "with a head full of snow", but still tired, tired, tired of everything. Isn't it hard not to feel that way sometimes?



I can't help but imagine this song as a beautiful blues moan, just a flurry of impassioned acoustic guitar strums and ticks a la Son House, with Jagger stomping his foot and wailing about letting the airwaves flow and sleeping under strange, strange skies. It would be perfect--even though it's already perfect the way it is, a bookend to an immortal album.