‘Emotional Rescue’ — How the Stones Got Disco at Compass Point

By 1980, the Stones were in a weird spot. They’d just finished a grueling tour, they were chasing new sounds, and suddenly Mick Jagger was singing in falsetto over a light funk groove built by Bill Wyman’s bass and Charlie Watts’s locked-in hi-hat. The whole thing was cut at Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas—a place that smelled like weed and saltwater and where the humidity supposedly helped singers hit higher notes. The band wanted to shed the raw, blues-punk shell of Some Girls and lean into the disco pulse that was still ruling the charts.

That falsetto wasn’t an accident. Jagger had heard the Bee Gees and saw a chance to mock them and use them at the same time. He called it a “joke” at first, but Keith Richards later admitted it worked because the band let the rhythm breathe instead of forcing a swagger. The guitar stays scratchy and secondary, the horns float in like a parody of a satin-shirted lounge band, and the whole track sounds like a guy who’s both horny and laughing at himself. It wasn’t “Miss You” part two—it was looser, weirder, and more tropical. Compass Point’s open-air studio vibe seeped into the tape, and you can hear it in the fluttery percussion and the way the chorus almost sways. That was the point: a rock band trying on a polyester suit and realizing it fit better than they expected.