{"id":616147,"date":"2025-12-06T15:06:19","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T15:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/616147\/"},"modified":"2025-12-06T15:06:19","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T15:06:19","slug":"rod-stewart-namedsone-of-his-favourite-songs-ever-written","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/616147\/","title":{"rendered":"Rod Stewart namedsone of his favourite songs ever written"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Rod<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

Sat 6 December 2025 14:00, UK <\/p>\n

At the beginning of his career, Rod Stewart<\/a> had a solid circle of influences, from Eddie Cochran to Sam Cooke. \u201cI went from being a beatnik to a mod with long hair,\u201d he once said.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

It makes sense, then, that some of Stewart\u2019s favourite songs to perform are the ones that are more vocally charming \u2013 or straight-up fun. Many of Stewart\u2019s peers all fall into the same category when it comes to playing their hits or so-called \u201cfun\u201d fan favourites, opting to only play them on special occasions or omitting them from sets entirely.<\/p>\n

Stewart, however, is not one of them. Not anymore, at least. His most well-known song, \u2018Da Ya Think I\u2019m Sexy?\u2019, 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<\/a> in 2021, \u201cI love them all. They\u2019re my babies. There was a time I got tired of singing \u2018Da Ya Think I\u2019m Sexy?\u2019 because it was so critically put-down, but it made people happy, so what\u2019s wrong with that? It still puts a smile on people\u2019s faces when I sing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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>, a show that had him crying \u201cmy eyes out\u201d. <\/p>\n

Stewart discussed many of these seminal moments in 2018 for BBC Radio 2\u2019s 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\u2019 \u2018Feel So Good\u2019.<\/p>\n

However, the one that tops all of those, his ultimate favourite of them all and one he\u2019s mentioned more than once, is Bobby Womack\u2019s \u2018Lookin\u2019 For A Love\u2019. According to Stewart, Womack was one of the greatest soul singers of all time, and \u2018Lookin\u2019 For A Love\u2019 was a culmination of everything great about the singer and the genre in a broader sense. <\/p>\n

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 \u2018I\u2019d Rather Go Blind\u2019, \u2018This Old Heart of Mine\u2019, and \u2018(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Man\u2019. In fact, the entire collection seemed like a more extensive glimpse into all the songs and artists that shaped Stewart\u2019s vision, with a handful of his own hits that accrued legacies all on their own.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t come from the core of soul still leaned in that particular direction, taking on the familiar charms that defined Stewart\u2019s journey to self-discovery.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy) Sat 6 December 2025 14:00, UK At the beginning of his career, Rod…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,269,16207,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-616147","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-rod-stewart","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115673248141341406","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}