How the Rolling Stones Got That Gritty Sound on 'Love Is Strong'

The opening riff of “Love Is Strong” practically sounds like it’s been dragged through a swamp, and that’s by design. For the Voodoo Lounge sessions in 1993–94, the band wanted to shake off the polished production of their 1980s work. According to engineer Don Was, Mick Jagger’s vocal was run through a small, cheap boom box speaker and then re-recorded at high volume, causing the speaker cone to distort. That overdriven, slightly blown-out quality gives the verses a raw, almost menacing texture that contrasts with the cleaner chorus.

The boom box trick wasn’t the only gritty move. Guitarist Ron Wood played his slide parts through a tiny Fender Champ amp cranked to ten, and the bass drum was recorded with the microphone jammed right up against the head. Keith Richards later said the whole track was built around that “broken radio” vocal sound—a deliberate rejection of high-fidelity in favor of character. The result is a song that feels like it was recorded in a garage instead of a state-of-the-art studio, which is exactly what the Stones were after as they reclaimed their blues-rock roots for the 1990s.