(Credits: Far Out / Warner Bros. Records)
Thu 15 January 2026 8:00, UK
Any musician can only hope to lose count of the amount of hits they’ve had in the way that Rod Stewart can.
He may have been one of the raspiest voices in the blues rock scene, but once he left The Faces, there was a whole world waiting for him no matter what decade he found himself in. And while he was content to leave the standard pop market behind for a while to make easy listening music, it’s not like he’s ever going to forget the massive tunes that put him at the top of the rock and roll world.
But when looking at the version of Stewart that most people know, it’s hard to think of him being the same guy who worked magic for Jeff Beck. Had he stayed with the guitar wizard on his later records, there’s a good chance that he could have given Robert Plant a run for his money with Led Zeppelin, but many of the greatest moments of his career were much better suited to making rootsy takes on rock and roll music.
He was already cutting his teeth singing the blues on tunes like ‘Stay With Me’, but the fact that ‘Maggie May’ nearly was left on the cutting room floor is still one of the best happy accidents in music history. This is a song that has virtually no set chorus and only a few chords to help drive everything forward, and yet when looking at the rest of Every Picture Tells a Story, there’s something about it that manages to stick in everyone’s brain even if they didn’t have the kind of one-night stand that Stewart is talking about.
And while Stewart was a superstar throughout every part of his career, he doesn’t seem to get enough credit for being able to transition once MTV came in. This was the kind of pivot move that could have killed a bunch of rock and roll stars, but whereas someone like Billy Squire fell flat on his face when he tried his hand at making music videos, Stewart’s managed to hold up simply because the songs were that good, whether that was the synth textures of ‘Forever Young’ or trying to compete with punk on ‘Young Turks’.
Before any of that happened, though, Stewart already had a lot to answer for when ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy’ came out. While the entire rock community collectively felt that disco was the death of music, it’s not like the dance craze was absolutely wretched by any stretch. It had its merits, but many people felt that Stewart had crossed a line the minute he was writhing on the floor with that four-on-the-floor beat behind him.
Still, Stewart was never going to apologise for all the new fans he earned from the tune, saying, “When I recorded ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy’, which is probably the most popular song I have ever recorded, they thought I’d left rock and roll. I was a traitor because I recorded a disco song. Was I jumping on the bandwagon? Yes, and what’s wrong with that? I had a huge hit with it, and do people still like it? Of course they do.”
Even if the rock purists still haven’t let it go, it’s not like the song is an assault on the senses or anything. To his credit, Stewart seemed to be listening to the right tropes of disco when making the tune, and the fact that people managed to get sound angry really is a testament to how well he nailed the sound of it as opposed to The Rolling Stones trying to jump on the same bandwagon on ‘Miss You’.
If nothing else, the fact that Stewart was able to laugh at himself a little bit in hindsight is much better than him spending the rest of his life apologising for what is, in essence, an innocent pop song. No, it’s not a rock and roll number, but a lot of people that were listening to it feeling betrayed probably were not looking at it in good faith. Artists are allowed to switch things up, and it’s not like Stewart was losing sleep over it.
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