Considering Voodoo Lounge

Voodoo Lounge was released when I was 14 years old. It was the first Rolling Stones album I heard in its entirety. It even had a video that made the band look cool (if not larger than life.) Because it loomed so largely over my early days listening to the band I wanted to start a series of album reflections here.

The band had been inactive enough in the early nineties for the release of a new album to be considered major news. Released to radio on July 12, the lead single Love is Strong was considered such an event that CBC radio played the song following its regular morning news. So I heard the new single sitting in the kitchen with my mom.

My mother was intuitive enough to give me the new disc a week later for my birthday. At the time my Stones catalogue contained only the strange Made In the Shade compilation from the seventies and in my idiocy I had no way to contextualize the new material.

At the time, Rolling Stone magazine upheld their long tradition of bestowing the a new Stones record with a four star review and the suggestion that the new album was the best thing since Some Girls if not Tattoo You (sound familiar *cough* - A Bigger Bang!) It certainly has some game where Steel Wheels and Dirty Work didn't, but does it hold up nearly fifteen years later?

Yes, but not in every way. I still think that Love Is Strong into You Got Me Rocking is a fantastic one-two punch for the Stones. These along with Out of Tears and I Go Wild can be classified as the best among Voodoo's thirteen tracks. You Got Me Rocking stands out as the best rock song among these and the lyrics are hilarious. I remember that Maclean's magazine ran an interview with Jagger where they asked him if the lyric "I was a hooker losing her looks" was about his own noticeable aging. Jagger's response was "what kind of magazine is this anyways?"

Standing above all of these tracks, however, is Keith's Thru and Thru. This has got to be one of the toughest, most heartbreaking and dynamic songs ever recorded (by Keith or anyone else.) When it picks up the riff is outright menacing, but the lyric is still quite tender. There is an interesting live version of this on No Security but I'm afraid it doesn't stand up to the studio version. Keith's second contribution The Worst is a charming acoustic that I appreciated even at 14 for its sleepy sheepishness. Who else could have written this song?

Because of where it falls in my life, Voodoo Lounge stands out in the total Stones catalogue. It was a time when the Stones were particularly iconic in my imagination. I hadn't even started to explore their catalogue or history, but from where I am now it seems that starting at the present and working my way backwards was not such a bad way to get to know them.

Photo Credits For Mick and Keith Photos from 1994: Mark Seliger