Why 'Wild Horses' is the Softest Stone and the Two Heartbreaks That Wrote It

The most interesting thing about “Wild Horses” isn’t just that it’s a tender Stones song – it’s that the tenderness came from two very different kinds of pain. Keith Richards wrote the chord progression and the opening line while alone in a hotel room after a bust, missing his newborn son. Mick Jagger later wrote the rest of the lyrics about his relationship with Marianne Faithfull falling apart. The line “wild horses couldn’t drag me away” was Keith’s original thought, but Mick turned it into a goodbye.

It’s one of the few Stones ballads where neither of them tried to out-cool each other. Jagger’s vocal is fragile, almost cracked, and Richards plays a soft, crying guitar part that slides between chords like he’s half-asleep. The result is a song that feels emotionally unguarded in a way the Stones rarely allowed themselves. It’s no wonder Gram Parsons immediately fell in love with it and made the song a cornerstone of country-rock.