How the 2012 'Some Girls' Reissue Shifted Critical Perspective on a Stone Cold Classic

When the Rolling Stones reissued Some Girls in 2012 with a second disc of unreleased tracks, most critics already considered the 1978 album a late-career masterpiece. What surprised them wasn’t that the bonus material was good — it was how much it revealed about the band’s creative chaos at the time. Songs like “No Spare Parts” and “We Had It All” showed the Stones deep in a country-disco-punk blender, and that made the original album’s tight, snotty sound feel even more like a deliberate choice, not just a happy accident.

The reissue didn’t change the consensus that Some Girls was a return to form after the meandering Black and Blue — it deepened it. Prior to 2012, many saw the album as a single-minded reaction to punk. The bonus tracks proved the band had been all over the place stylistically, and that what landed on the vinyl was a curation of raw energy over polished genre exercises. That made the original feel less like a trend-chase and more like a survival instinct.

If anything, the critical reception elevated the album’s status. Rolling Stone gave it a five-star review, calling the extras “essential listening.” Other outlets noted that the outtakes didn’t embarrass the band — rare for a 34-year-old archive dump — and actually made the 1978 sessions look more fertile than anyone remembered. So no, the original wasn’t underrated before, but the reissue cemented Some Girls as the last truly great Stones album built from instinct, not legacy.