Rod Stewart

Certain Songs #2006: Rod Stewart – “You Wear It Well”

January 16, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Never A Dull Moment
Year: 1972

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Rod Stewart never really had what the pop chart folks call an “imperial phase,” where everything he released as a single automatically made the top 10. That said, he never really went away, either, lobbing occasional singles to the top of the charts until 1993, which is a pretty good run.

But that also means that songs you might remember as massive singles in the wake of “Maggie May” didn’t do as well as you might have expected: the Faces raucous “Stay With Me” and today’s “You Wear It Well maxed out at 17 and 13, respectively, the former overachieving and the latter underachieving.

Certain Songs #2005: Rod Stewart – “Italian Girls”

January 15, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Never A Dull Moment
Year: 1972

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You’d think after four albums, Rod Stewart & Ronnie Wood would have run out of songs like this, but the rascally, raggedy “Italian Girls” comes across like something from Exile on Main St, like the song that would have connected “Tumbling Dice” to “Sweet Virginia.”

I was going to joke that the first half of “Italian Girls” played like Ronnie Wood’s audition tape for the Stones, but of course, that was pretty much his entire career in the 1970s, and anyways, we’ll get to all of that in about a month or so, won’t we?

Certain Songs #2004: Rod Stewart – “Lost Paraguayos”

January 14, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Never A Dull Moment
Year: 1972

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The massive success of “Maggie May” and Every Picture Tells a Story turned Rod Stewart into ROD STEWART, SUPERSTAR, the kind of guy who would later humblebrag in his autobiography “at one point I was cheating on a Playboy model with another Playboy model” and make it seem charming.

But if it went to his head — which, eventually, it did, of course — you couldn’t tell it from the follow-up, 1972’s Never A Dull Moment, his fourth straight utter winner, full of songs that were seemingly tossed off, like the early highlight, “Lost Paraguayos.”

Certain Songs #2003: Rod Stewart – “(I Know) I’m Losing You”

January 13, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Every Picture Tells a Story
Year: 1971

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You come at The Temptations, you best not miss. Their original 1966 version of “(I Know) I’m Losing You” was a masterpiece of pure tension, anchored by a gut-bucket Cornelius Grant guitar riff and a desperate David Ruffin vocal that was so compelling it went up to #8 despite not having a chorus. (SPOILER ALERT: There will be a shit-ton of Temptations when I get there).

And while Rare Earth had some how taken their pedestrian version up to #7 in 1970 — fucking hippies! — Rod Stewart decided to tackle it anyways, and with the help of The Faces, rocked it really fucking hard.

Certain Songs #2002: Rod Stewart – “Mandolin Wind”

January 12, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Every Picture Tells a Story
Year: 1971

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So how did Rod follow “Maggie May” — a song with a mandolin solo for the ages — on Every Picture Tells a Story? With an entire song about mandolins! And the wind they make!!

Well, that’s not entirely true, as “Mandolin Wind” is really a heartfelt love song.

Certain Songs #2001: Rod Stewart – “Maggie May”

January 11, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Every Picture Tells A Story
Year: 1971

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So you’re sound asleep in bed, on a cool early Autumn morning. And you’re beside that cute boy you’ve been sleeping with. And he really is a boy, at least compared to you. He’s legal, so it’s not like that, but you’re on the wrong side of an age that you maybe never thought you were ever going to get to in the first place. But here you are, and back when you were the boy’s age, they lined up to be with you, but that was a long time ago, and he was the first one in quite some time that truly seemed like he was into you, and you stopped thinking about the future because the present was so nice.

And then the boy rouses you out of that sound sleep and goes:

Certain Songs #2000: Rod Stewart – “Every Picture Tells A Story”

January 9, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Every Picture Tells a Story
Year: 1971

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Choosing your all-time favorite song when you’ve written 2000 posts about your favorite songs is a fools game. I mean, it might be “Answering Machine” or “Left of The Dial” or “Ceremony” or even “The Swish.”

Or it might very well be “Every Picture Tells A Story.”

Certain Songs #1999: Rod Stewart – “Cut Across Shorty”

January 8, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Gasoline Alley
Year: 1970

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Here’s a thing I never knew until I was this many years old: “Cut Across Shorty” was the last song that Eddie Cochran ever recorded. His version, of course, was what you might expect: country on the verses, raving-up on the chorus — drummer Jerry Allison killing it throughout — and basically getting through the story in an economical 2:02.

That’s not at all the direction Rod Stewart took the song in. In fact, we’re almost a minute in before we get anything but a “woooo!” out of Stewart’s mouth.

Certain Songs #1998: Rod Stewart – “My Way of Giving”

January 7, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Gasoline Alley
Year: 1970

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And so Rod Stewart spent the first half of the 1970s alternating between releasing solo albums and being the front man for the Faces. And so the debut album by the Faces, First Step, came out in March of 1970, followed three months later by Rod’s second solo album, Gasoline Alley.

And while the folk, blues and soul orientations of the solo albums were sonically different from the bash-em-out rock n roll songs that Faces specialized in, he started giving them at least one song on solo album, because why not? I mean, they’re the fucking Faces.

Certain Songs #1997: Rod Stewart – “I Wouldn’t Ever Change a Thing”

January 5, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Rod Stewart Album
Year: 1969

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My favorite song on The Rod Stewart Album is a multi-part keyboard-drenched epic that features one of the most human moments I’ve ever heard on any record. Never a prolific writer, Rod snaked around that by being an ace interpreter, especially of his own songs, where he brought out their soul-baring aspects without ever getting maudlin.

“I Woudn’t Ever Change a Thing” is a prime example of this, an insanely wise look back from a guy who was way too young to be this wise.