Rob Sheffield Quote

One of the things I love about the Stones is that whenever they aimed for Beatle-style warmth—as in The Singer Not the Song or Wild Horses—they still sounded fabulously surly. That’s what made them the Stones. They never got close to the unzipped exuberance of I Want to Hold Your Hand or I Feel Fine or Eight Days a Week—part of Mick’s vast intelligence was to understand he didn’t have that kind of sincerity in his empty heart, and he was too crafty to make a clown of himself trying to fake it. He knew he couldn’t out-Beatle the Beatles. So the Stones chose different turf to conquer. The Stones were Stonesier. The Beatles were merely better.