It's Only Rock 'n Roll (But I Like It)

"It's Only Rock 'n Roll (But I Like It)" functions as the Rolling Stones performing a meta-commentary on their own existence — a gesture of cheerful self-awareness from a band that understood exactly what they were and had decided to be nothing else. The track was primarily written and recorded by Mick Jagger and David Bowie before the Stones finished it, and Bowie's theatrical sensibility lurks in the production's glam sheen. Charlie Watts drives everything with his characteristic anti-rock-star drumming, absolutely functional and therefore absolutely locked, giving Jagger room to preen. The lyric is a performer's declaration: I know this is a cheap transaction, I know you might not care, I know it might not change your life — but I'd still bleed for your applause. There is something almost vulnerable hiding inside the swagger, the admission that what he does for a living has always been both more and less than serious art. Heard in a bar at the right volume, it becomes communal testimony. The crowd is the song's final instrument.