Sticky Fingers is the ninth British and eleventh American studio album by the English rock band the Rolling Stones, released 23 April 1971 on their new, and own, label Rolling Stones Records after previously having been contracted by Decca Records and London Records in the UK and US since 1963. It is Mick Taylor’s second full-length appearance on a Rolling Stones album (after the live album Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!) without contributions from guitarist and founder Brian Jones, who died two years earlier. The original cover artwork, conceived by Andy Warhol and photographed and designed by members of his art collective, The Factory, showed a picture of a man in tight jeans, and had a working zipper that opened to reveal underwear fabric. The cover was expensive to produce and damaged the vinyl record, so later re-issues featured just the outer photograph of the jeans.
The album featured a return to basics for the Rolling Stones. The unusual instrumentation introduced several albums prior was absent; most songs featuring drums, guitar, bass, and percussion as provided by the key members: Mick Jagger (lead vocal, various percussion and rhythm guitar), Keith Richards (guitar and backing vocal), Mick Taylor (guitar), Bill Wyman (bass guitar), and Charlie Watts (drums). Additional contributions were made by long-time Stones collaborators including saxophonist Bobby Keys and keyboardists Billy Preston, Jack Nitzsche, Ian Stewart, and Nicky Hopkins. As with the other albums of the Rolling Stones classic late 1960s/early 1970s period, it was produced by Jimmy Miller.
Sticky Fingers is considered one of the Rolling Stones’ best albums. It was the band’s first album to reach number one on both the UK albums and US albums charts, and has since achieved triple platinum certification in the US. “Brown Sugar” topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 1971. Sticky Fingers was voted the second best album of the year in The Village Voice’s annual Pazz & Jop critics poll for 1971, based on American critics’ votes. The album is inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame and included in Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list.
All tracks are written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, except where noted.
Side one
“Brown Sugar” 3:48
“Sway” 3:50
“Wild Horses” 5:42
“Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” 7:14
“You Gotta Move” (writers: Fred McDowell, Gary Davis) 2:32
Side two
“Bitch” 3:38
“I Got the Blues” 3:54
“Sister Morphine” (writers: Jagger, Richards, Marianne Faithfull) 5:31
“Dead Flowers” 4:03
“Moonlight Mile”
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