(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Thu 8 January 2026 16:39, UK
Everything The Rolling Stones have ever done had a rock and roll swagger pouring out of the speakers. Even if they were being a bit too liberal in cribbing from The Beatles on some of their early records, their bad-boy approach to classics like ‘Satisfaction’ was the perfect foil to what Lennon and McCartney had been doing in Liverpool. While they would eventually morph into blues-rock troubadours, not everything had been perfect, and Keith Richards was among the first to say that he wasn’t exactly a fan of where they went on Emotional Rescue.
Then again, I want to be generous to this version of The Stones’ career. It’s far from Exile on Main St or even Between the Buttons, but hearing them try to adapt to the sounds of the 1980s was a lot better than a lot of their contemporaries were attempting at the time. They even had a solid disco smash on the last album with ‘Miss You’, so there was still room for them to adapt their old sound.
And while Richards turns in a decent performance on the closer ‘All About You’, a lot of the album is far too meandering for a Stones project. Sure, they could jam when they wanted to, but a lot of the tracks feel like they were workshopping ideas and didn’t know when to tell the producer to stop recording.
Of all the songs on the album, though, the title track is one of the better grooves that they would lay down in the 1980s. Considering the embarrassments like Undercover and Dirty Work were on the horizon, hearing them tap into something soulful and making it work calls back to the days when they were playing old-school R&B in London clubs before they had a penny to their name.
Richards could at least commend ‘Emotional Rescue’ for being a kickass tune, but he blamed most of the subpar moments on Jagger, saying, “This was all Mick. He wanted to go that way, with the clubby disco stuff. I didn’t particularly, but it was a good song. This was shortly after I’d cleaned up my act, and nobody was taking a lot of notice of what I said at this point because I didn’t say much. I was trying to re-establish myself as co-leader of the band.”
Considering The Stones were about to hit a bit of a brick wall on their later projects, ‘Emotional Rescue’ does at least sound like it’s coming from a genuine place. Even John Lennon was a fan, calling it one of his favourites when he was coming back from his hiatus on Double Fantasy.
There are still a few decent moments on the record that see Richards getting his groove on as well. It’s definitely by the numbers by Stones standards, but ‘She’s So Cold’ is practically a warm-up for ‘Start Me Up’, with Jagger putting some more attitude behind his delivery that sounds almost punk-ish.
Still, this wasn’t the kind of Stones that fans got to know back in the day. This was Jagger trying to shoehorn them into the modern sounds of the time, and while ‘Emotional Rescue’ is a fantastic instance of that working, it’s not exactly replacing ‘Gimme Shelter’ on their greatest hits by any stretch.
In that sense, Emotional Rescue feels less like a misstep and more like a band treading water during a transitional moment. The Stones had survived the 1960s by instinct, the 1970s by excess, and now found themselves navigating a decade that rewarded sheen over grit. Richards’ discomfort is understandable, because the album often sounds like a compromise rather than conviction, a group negotiating relevance instead of redefining it on their own terms.
That tension would ultimately push the band back toward firmer ground. When they locked into something simpler and more muscular, as they would soon do, the Stones rediscovered the clarity that had always made them dangerous. Emotional Rescue may never stand as a definitive statement, but it captures a moment where the band were still willing to experiment, even if it meant occasionally losing sight of who they were. For better or worse, it is the sound of survival rather than surrender.
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