UMeThis Saturday, June 9, marks the 40th anniversary of the release of The Rolling Stones‘ classic album, Some Girls. It’s the band’s best-selling studio effort in the U.S., having sold over six million copies.
The album spent two weeks at #1 on the Billboard 200 and yielded three top 40 hits on the Hot 100 tally: the chart-topping “Miss You”; “Beast of Burden,” which reached #8; and “Shattered,” which peaked at #31.
The 10-track collection also featured other memorable tracks, like “When the Whip Comes Down,” “Respectable,” the country-flavored “Far Away Eyes” and a cover of The Temptations‘ “Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me).”
The Stones courted controversy with the album’s title track, which featured an explicit lyric about African-American women that prompted protests from some civil rights organizations. Singer Mick Jagger defended the line by maintaining that the song was a parody of racist attitudes.
Some Girls featured a unique album cover with holes cut out to display an inner sleeve that featured a variety of women’s faces, along with those of the band members donning lipstick. An initial version of the cover included photos of such famous female celebrities as Lucille Ball, Farrah Fawcett, Marilyn Monroe, Raquel Welch and Judy Garland, but the band was forced to remove the stars’ images from the packaging in subsequent pressings because the group didn’t get permission to use the photos.
Among the guest artists on the album: Faces keyboardist Ian McLagan, Bad Company drummer Simon Kirke on congas and King Crimson sax player Mel Collins.
Deluxe reissues of Some Girls, featuring a variety of bonus outtakes from the original sessions, were released in November 2011.
Here’s the Some Girls track list:
“Miss You”
“When the Whip Comes Down”
“Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)”
“Some Girls”
“Lies”
“Far Away Eyes”
“Respectable”
“Before They Make Me Run”
“Beast of Burden”
“Shattered”
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