The Rolling Stones achieved levels of fame and musical quality that most bands could only dream about in the early 1970s. The middle of the decade was less kind. Drugged, tired, and uninspired were the hallmarks of those middle years. Goats Head Soup, It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll, and Black And Blue all had their moments of greatness, but those moments were dwindling and increasingly outnumbered by mediocre efforts.

The same can be said for rock and roll in general in the mid-1970s, at least as far as the radio was concerned. Singer-songwriters filled the airwaves with sensitive, plaintive ballads. Progressive rock was also big, but it was bloated. How bloated? In 1975, Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman staged a performance of his solo album The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. On ice. By the mid-70s mainstream rock had very little to say to the kids in the street. It’s hard to connect with your fans when you’re flying around in a private jumbo jet with the name of your band emblazoned on the side.

By the time the Stones brought in ex-Face Ron Wood to replace Mick Taylor, the reigning style of music was disco, its pulsating rhythms and repetitive beat blaring in the trendiest night spots in New York and Paris, where jet-setting Mick Jagger was spending a lot of time.

But there was another style of music that was also rising in prominence, especially in England. Punk rock was still relegated to some of the smaller and seedier establishments in New York but over in Blighty the Sex Pistols were being excoriated in Parliament and punk rock was as hated and feared as any music since 1956, when Elvis Presley gave older America a serious case of the vapors. Jagger, always looking to stay current, was paying attention. So was Keith Richards who didn’t like disco but did like the energy and enthusiasm of punk, even while he labored under the mistaken belief that punk rock musicians couldn’t play their instruments. (This was a common belief. After all, the punk rock poster boy was Sid Vicious, who really couldn’t play his instrument.) Punk rock and disco were the ingredients that fueled Some Girls.

People didn’t know what to make of “Miss You”, the leadoff single and opening track on the album. To this day the song divides Stones fans; some think it’s a betrayal of everything the Stones built their career on; some, while acknowledging that it is at base a disco song, recognize all the elements that make the Stones the legends they are today.

What makes “Miss You” a disco song is the beat, which Charlie Watts could play in his sleep. The “four-to-the-floor” beat was the hallmark of disco because it made the music so danceable. The lyrics, steeped in the hustle and bustle of New York City (as were many of the songs on the album), placed the song at the epicenter of the disco explosion. The combination of the beat, the words, and the wordless “ah hah” hook firmly locks the song into the disco era. The Stones were the first of the big-name rock bands to tip their hat to dance music. Virtually every other legendary rock performer would also record a dance song over the next couple of years: Paul McCartney, Elton John, the Kinks, even Kiss.

What the detractors miss is that this is a Stones song, recorded at a time when they were still legitimately bad boys. “Miss You” may be disco, but it’s disco played with far more aggression, passion, and intensity than any other disco song before or since. The justifiably famous harmonica hook, played by bluesman Sugar Blue, ties the song into the roots of the band, and the soaring bridge brings the song back into rock. The saxophone solo, played by Mel Collins, even ropes in Progressive Rock; Collins was a Prog Rock stalwart after playing in bands like King Crimson and Caravan. Jagger’s partially spoken, falsetto-ridden, proto-rap performance is over-the-top but Jagger knows it, which adds to the basic good humor of the song; Bill Wyman’s slinky bass is prominent for one of the last times on a Stones song. From a style of music not noted for songwriting, “Miss You” remains one of the pinnacles of the disco movement. The lyrics both reflect and satirize disco-era Manhattan.

Despite the fact that it became a hit single and a staple of Stones concerts, the reaction to “Miss You” among rock fans was so polarizing that, to this day, there are people who think of Some Girls as the “disco album”. Those people couldn’t be more wrong. Disco shows up on the album in the lyrics but, with the exception of a few tracks, Some Girls is the closest the Stones ever got to punk rock. Lyrically, “When the Whip Comes Down” holds up a mirror to the overwhelmingly gay habitués that Jagger was encountering at Studio 54, the infamous New York disco. The line about “going down fifty-third street and they’re spitting in my face” refers to a spot that was notorious for gay prostitution. It also nods in the direction of the Ramones, who sang about turning tricks for heroin in the song “53rd and Third”. The lyrics are really an update of the notorious unreleased Stones song “Cocksucker Blues”. The lonesome schoolboy has left his position in Trafalgar Square and made it to New York.

Musically, this was the Stones rocking again, harder than they had at any time since Exile On Main Street. The jump in inspiration over the previous three albums is so startlingly obvious that it highlights just how uninspired much of those earlier albums were. The addition of Ron Wood on guitar was a perfect choice: his style meshes perfectly with Keith’s and the two became a pile-driving powerhouse. And let’s all pause for a moment to reflect on the great Charlie Watts…his drumming on this album is some of the best he’s ever done and the breaks at the end of “When The Whip Comes Down” are particularly fearsome.

As they did on It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll, the Stones went back to the Temptations for a cover song. The Stones bring out the bluesier side of “Just My Imagination”, turning a Motown ballad into a gritty rocker. As it does throughout the album, the Big Apple gets a shoutout as Jagger changes the lyrics from “in the world” to “in New York”. It’s odd, but true, that a band from England made one of the quintessential New York City albums; the city lives and breathes throughout the album, and many of the songs capture with near-photographic quality what the city was like in 1977 and 1978.

The title track is one of the most controversial songs in the Rolling Stones canon. The band achieved a number one hit with “Brown Sugar” in 1971, a song about sadism, masochism, slavery, and interracial oral sex, but it was “Some Girls” that got them in trouble despite the fact that the lyrics are clearly meant to be funny. Jagger sings about the many women he’s known, contrasting the good (who give him money, jewelry, diamonds, etc) and the bad (those who take “all my bread”, give him children he “never asked them for”, and those who leave him with “a lethal dose”), but it’s the litany of ethnic stereotypes that got the band in trouble with feminists and civil rights groups. The song is a blues-based mid-tempo rocker with a great harmonica from Sugar Blue prominent throughout. Taken as a serious meditation on the qualities of women across the world, it’s offensive. But it’s not that. It’s a joke, and a pretty funny one that happens to be married to a great tune.

“Lies” is the fastest rocker the Stones had recorded since “Rip This Joint”, which makes it one of the fastest songs the band ever recorded. It’s a bit slight, and the lyrics are a trifle, but the song is performed with such drive and energy that it’s impossible not to like it.

Side two of the LP begins with another one of those divisive Stones songs. Jagger’s Southern drawl-infused vocal is so exaggerated in its cornpone hillbilly elocution that it’s easy to miss that “Far Away Eyes” has a wonderful chorus and is one of the funniest songs in the Stones repertoire. It’s both a loving tribute to Bakersfield-style country music and a parody of the same. Backed by a shimmering pedal steel played by Ron Wood, Jagger speak/sings a hilarious tale of being on the road, down on your luck, running red lights in the name of Jesus, and meeting the title girl who makes it all right. The backing of a simple guitar, bass, and drums is understated in the finest tradition of Bakersfield, and lets the pedal steel shine gloriously.

“Respectable” is another punk-fueled raveup, marveling at how the bad boys of rock and roll are now hobnobbing with Presidents and other foreign dignitaries, while also putting down a respectable woman who’s really nothing of the sort. Like “Lies” the beauty is in the performance, since the lyrics are mainly two verses and an endlessly repeated chorus. The lyrics here act as a bridge between the ferocious guitar breaks provided by Richards and Wood.

Keith Richards shines on “Before They Make Me Run”, his ravaged vocals highlighting one of the last truly great Richards showcases on a Rolling Stones album. It’s his last genuine outlaw anthem, a chugging riff rocker about his then-recent heroin bust in Toronto. There’s a wonderfully understated pedal steel guitar played by Ron Wood, locking in and weaving with Keith’s guitar solo. The country element in an otherwise straight rocker is perhaps a tip of the cap to Richards’s late friend Gram Parsons, to whom the lyric “another goodbye to another good friend” refers.

The influences that inspired Some Girls are in clear evidence on the final tracks. “Beast Of Burden” is another disco-influenced track, custom-made for a slower spin on the dance floor. As a ballad, it is less recognizably a disco song, but that beat was definitely made for a slow dance. The album closer, though, is another trip to downtown New York. “Shattered” wears its punk influence clearly, a hard-charging riff underpinning the “New York City in 1978” lyrics. The Big Apple was rotting in the late 1970s, and “Shattered” captures the essence of the city almost perfectly. “What a mess/This town’s in tatters” sings Jagger. “Go ahead, bite the Big Apple/Don’t mind the maggots.” “Shattered” is a perfect Rolling Stones song, a concise mix of humor, pathos, decadence, and rip-roaring rock and roll. It’s the only way Some Girls could have ended. This album, and the tour that followed, were the last vestiges of the band that burst out of London in 1964. The Stones would become something else after Some Girls, and this was the last salvo fired by the band that made Exile on Main Street and Sticky Fingers. They had finally made an album that was a worthy successor to those masterpieces.

Grade: A+