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Sat 6 December 2025 14:00, UK
At the beginning of his career, Rod Stewart had a solid circle of influences, from Eddie Cochran to Sam Cooke. “I went from being a beatnik to a mod with long hair,” he once said.
Most of the names that Stewart looked up to were all about the voice. He fell in love with Cochran because of his sensual husk, a pattern among many of the singers he tried to emulate before he was a name in his own right. It wasn’t so much about style and substance as how the voice and music sounded, and all he wanted to do was follow in the same footsteps.
It makes sense, then, that some of Stewart’s favourite songs to perform are the ones that are more vocally charming – or straight-up fun. Many of Stewart’s peers all fall into the same category when it comes to playing their hits or so-called “fun” fan favourites, opting to only play them on special occasions or omitting them from sets entirely.
Stewart, however, is not one of them. Not anymore, at least. His most well-known song, ‘Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?’, still excites him to this day, mainly because of the reaction it still manages to get from crowds during live performances. As he reflected to The Guardian in 2021, “I love them all. They’re my babies. There was a time I got tired of singing ‘Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?’ because it was so critically put-down, but it made people happy, so what’s wrong with that? It still puts a smile on people’s faces when I sing it.”
It’s a similar feeling he experienced with his own heroes growing up and in the early years of his career. Soul, especially, took him to those special places, with people like Otis Redding showing him the power of raw emotion when it came to live music after seeing him in 1967 at the Kuban State, a show that had him crying “my eyes out”.
Stewart discussed many of these seminal moments in 2018 for BBC Radio 2’s Tracks of My Years, in which he also went into some of the more current names that tickle his fancy, like Bruno Mars, who has the kind of talent and charm reminiscent of Michael Jackson, according to the singer. However, many of his all-time favourites, and ones that he keeps coming back to, are ones that had a heavy hand in shaping his approach and sound, like Muddy Waters’ ‘Feel So Good’.
However, the one that tops all of those, his ultimate favourite of them all and one he’s mentioned more than once, is Bobby Womack’s ‘Lookin’ For A Love’. According to Stewart, Womack was one of the greatest soul singers of all time, and ‘Lookin’ For A Love’ was a culmination of everything great about the singer and the genre in a broader sense.
He loved the song so much, in fact, that he released his own version for his 2009 compilation The Rod Stewart Sessions 1971-1998, which also included several other soul classics, like ‘I’d Rather Go Blind’, ‘This Old Heart of Mine’, and ‘(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Man’. In fact, the entire collection seemed like a more extensive glimpse into all the songs and artists that shaped Stewart’s vision, with a handful of his own hits that accrued legacies all on their own.
If for nothing else, it also proved just how influential those sounds were on Stewart in a broader sense, not just musically and sonically but in his own attitude to creative expression. After all, even some of those that didn’t come from the core of soul still leaned in that particular direction, taking on the familiar charms that defined Stewart’s journey to self-discovery.
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