How Punk Forced the Rolling Stones to Get Raw Again on Some Girls

By 1977, the Rolling Stones were looking tired—bloated, lounging in tax exile in Paris, churning out bloated records like Black and Blue. Then punk hit. The Ramones were playing three-minute buzzsaw songs in New York, and the Sex Pistols were spitting on everything the Stones had become. The Stones had been punk before punk existed—now they looked like the establishment.

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards understood the threat immediately. If they didn’t get tough, they’d be irrelevant. So Jagger shaved his stubble, Richards cut his hair, and they walked into a Paris studio determined to make a record that could stand next to the energy of a Ramones set. They banned long jams, cut solos, and boiled songs down to their bones.

The result was Some Girls—the Stones’ punk album without being punk. “Shattered” stabs like a Pistols track. “Miss You” sneers with disco-punk attitude. And the whole record moves with a lean, hungry spite they hadn’t shown since Exile on Main St. It worked because it wasn’t imitation—it was self-preservation.