One of the best ways to understand a song’s true strength is to hear it played by someone else. When a song can be lifted from its original context, performed by a different artist in a new style, and still resonate, you know the writers built it on a solid foundation. Looking at the sheer breadth of artists who have successfully interpreted the songs of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, it becomes clear that their songwriting partnership created something remarkably durable. While their own recordings as The Rolling Stones are iconic, it’s the cover versions that reveal the fundamental power of the compositions themselves.
The playlist immediately highlights how deeply their writing is rooted in the American soul and R&B they revered. It’s one thing to be influenced by a genre; it’s another to write songs that the masters of that genre can inhabit as their own. When you hear Aretha Franklin transform “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” into a gospel-fueled force of nature, or Ike & Tina Turner inject “Honky Tonk Women” with their signature high-octane energy, you realize the songs contain an authentic rhythmic and emotional core. This goes even deeper with Solomon Burke’s take on “I Got the Blues” or Bettye LaVette’s searing, world-weary version of “Salt of the Earth.” These aren’t just covers; they are reclamations, demonstrating that the blueprints Jagger and Richards created were so solid that they could hold the weight of the most powerful voices in soul music.
What’s also remarkable is the structural flexibility of their work. A great Jagger/Richards song often has a distinct personality, yet its core components—melody, lyrical theme, and chordal movement—are adaptable enough to thrive in entirely new environments. The post-punk angularity of Devo’s “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” strips away the blues swagger to expose the lyric’s timeless complaint of modern alienation. The Sundays reimagine the country-tinged “Wild Horses” as a piece of shimmering, ethereal dream pop, proving the song’s beautiful melody is its true anchor. Even more extreme, the Ramones boil “Out of Time” down to its raw essentials, recasting the shuffling pop song as a driving, three-chord punk declaration, while Ituana finds a relaxed, bossa nova groove in the epic “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” The songs don’t just survive these transformations; they reveal different facets of their character.
Ultimately, this collection of performances underscores that the Jagger/Richards catalog is more than a collection of iconic riffs and rock and roll attitude. These are fundamentally well-crafted songs. They can be country laments in the hands of Johnny Cash (“No Expectations”) or Steve Earle (“Dead Flowers”). They can be theatrical pop statements for David Bowie (“Let’s Spend The Night Together”) or Bryan Ferry (“Sympathy for the Devil”). They can even be played for laughs by “Weird Al” and The Folksmen precisely because the source material is so instantly recognizable. The Rolling Stones’ versions will always be definitive, but these interpretations from other artists give us a clearer view of the writers’ craft, proving the songs stand on their own, ready for anyone to find a piece of their own story within them.
Follow Tunes Du Jour on Facebook
Follow me on Bluesky
Follow me on Instagram
