Lester Bangs on 'Some Girls': Punk’s Favorite Critic Gave the Stones a Mixed Report Card

Lester Bangs didn’t exactly call The Rolling Stones dinosaurs in his 1978 review of Some Girls — but he wasn’t handing out flowers either. Writing for Rolling Stone, Bangs gave the album a guarded nod: he liked the energy and the disco-punk pivot (“Miss You” in particular), but he also saw a band nervously glancing over their shoulder at the kids. He compared the record to a boxer who’d won on points, not a knockout.

Bangs dismissed the idea that the Stones had reinvented themselves. Instead, he framed Some Girls as a survival move — a band that still had the chops but no longer the arrogance. He praised Jagger’s cynical lyrics (“Beast of Burden” got a thumbs-up) while reserving the sharpest barbs for the album’s weaker cuts, which he called