December’s Children (And Everybody’s)
Year: 1965
. . .
There’s a lot of meta going on with the Rolling Stones recording of “As Tears Go By.”
For one thing, they probably never expected to be recording it, as it was not only one of the first songs they ever wrote in 1964, it really really didn’t fit the “bad boys of British R&B” image that they were cultivating at the time.
So, instead, Andrew Loog Oldham gave it to an aspiring singer who only recorded it because she couldn’t figure out how to sing the song that was going to be her first single. That aspiring singer, of course, was Marianne Faithfull, who took a very baroque version of “As Tears Go By” to number nine on the British charts on the strength of her sympathetic vocals, the nostalgic lyrics, and a pretty fucking killer melody. Probably the fact that she looked like a young Marianne Faithfull didn’t hurt, either.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2023: The Rolling Stones – “As Tears Go By”