| "Wild Horses" | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by The Rolling Stones | ||||||||||||||
| from the album Sticky Fingers | ||||||||||||||
| B-side | "Sway" | |||||||||||||
| Released | 12 June 1971 | |||||||||||||
| Format | 7" | |||||||||||||
| Recorded | December 1969 – February 1970 | |||||||||||||
| Genre | Roots rock, country rock, folk rock | |||||||||||||
| Length | 5:42 | |||||||||||||
| Label | Rolling Stones Records RS-19101 |
|||||||||||||
| Writer(s) | Jagger/Richards | |||||||||||||
| Producer | Jimmy Miller | |||||||||||||
| The Rolling Stones singles chronology | ||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
"Wild Horses" is a song by The Rolling Stones from their 1971 album Sticky Fingers, written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Rolling Stone ranked it at #334 in its "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list in 2004.
Contents |
In the liner notes to the 1993 Rolling Stones collection Jump Back: The Best of The Rolling Stones, Jagger states, "Everyone always says this was written about Marianne but I don't think it was; that was all well over by then. But I was definitely very inside this piece emotionally."[1] Keith Richards and Gram Parsons wrote the melody and came up with the phrase "Wild Horses".[1]
Originally recorded over a three day period at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama during 2–4 December 1969, the song was not released until over a year later due to legal wranglings with the band's former label. Along with "Brown Sugar", it is one of the two Rolling Stones compositions from Sticky Fingers over which Allen Klein co-owns the rights along with the Stones. It features session player Jim Dickinson on piano, Richards on electric guitar and 12-string acoustic guitar, and Mick Taylor on acoustic guitar. Taylor uses Nashville tuning, in which the EADG strings of the acoustic guitar are tuned one octave higher. Ian Stewart was present at the session, but refused to perform the piano part on the track due to the prevalence of minor chords, which he disliked playing.[2]
In 2007, Jagger's ex-wife, Jerry Hall, named "Wild Horses" as her favorite Rolling Stones song.[3]
Released as the second US-only single in June 1971, "Wild Horses" reached #28 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Although popular at the Rolling Stones' live shows, "Wild Horses" has only been released in a reworked version on the 1995 acoustic/live album Stripped. This version was released as a single in 1996.
The song featured prominently in the film Adaptation. (2002), and an instrumental version of the song features during the end credits of the Stones documentary Shine a Light.
Prior to its release on Sticky Fingers, Gram Parsons convinced Jagger and Richards to allow him to record "Wild Horses" with his band, The Flying Burrito Brothers. While the Rolling Stones had already laid the track to tape, the Burrito Brothers' version was actually the first to be released, appearing on their second album, Burrito Deluxe, in April 1970, one year before Sticky Fingers.
The song was prominently covered by British dream-pop group The Sundays (often incorrectly attributed to Mazzy Star, The Cranberries or Sarah McLachlan.) This version was featured in the 1996 thriller Fear, the CSI episode "Crash and Burn", the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "The Prom", and was released on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Album compilation. The Sundays' cover was also used in a long-running television advertisement for Budweiser beer in the early 1990s, featuring slow-motion footage of galloping Clydesdale horses.
It has proven to be a popular cover song for other artists. It has been covered by The Flying Burrito Brothers, Deborah Harry, Garbage, Elvis Costello, Neil Young, Gary Stewart, Old and in the Way, Leon Russell, Guns N' Roses, Johnny Goudie, Gregory Isaacs, Bush, Labelle, Robin Williamson, Jewel, Dave Matthews, Indigo Girls, Charlotte Martin, Kelly Clarkson, Chantal Kreviazuk, Molly Hatchet, Alicia Keys featuring Adam Levine, Tre Lux, Flowing Tears, Iron & Wine, Stone Sour, Honeytribe, Sheryl Crow, Deacon Blue, Elisa, Melanie Safka, John Barrowman, Susan Boyle, BlackHawk, The Lovemongers with Chris Cornell, Corey Taylor, Richard Marx with Jessica Andrews, Robert Francis, and Solveig Slettahjell. In 2007, Carolina Crown Drum and Bugle Corps used the song for their field show, "Triple Crown", and Daniel Letterle sang it in the film Camp. Dave Matthews performed a live duet of this song with Jagger, backed by The Rolling Stones. Aly Michalka covered the song in a Hellcats episode. Most recently Willie Nelson and the Nelson Family covered the song and issued a video to help the Animal Welfare Institute campaign to protect wild horses in America.[4]
On the first season of the American version of The X-Factor in 2011, contestant Josh Krajcik performed a rendition of the song solo while playing the piano as his fifth live performance.
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||