"(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" is a song by the English
rock band
the Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones are an English Rock music, rock band formed in London in 1962. Active for over six decades, they are one of the most popular, influential, and enduring bands of the Album era, rock era. In the early 1960s, the band pione ...
. A product of
Mick Jagger and
Keith Richards'
songwriting partnership, it features a
guitar riff by Richards that opens and drives the song. The riff is widely considered one of the greatest
hooks of all time. The song's lyrics refer to
sexual frustration and
commercialism
Commercialism is the application of both manufacturing and consumption towards personal usage, or the practices, methods, aims, and distribution of products in a free market geared toward generating a profit. Commercialism can also refer, positi ...
.
The song was first released as a single in the United States in June 1965 and was also featured on the American version of the Rolling Stones' fourth studio album, ''
Out of Our Heads'', released that July. "Satisfaction" was a hit, giving the Stones their first number one in the US. In the UK, the song initially was played only on
pirate radio stations, because its lyrics were considered too sexually suggestive.
It later became the Rolling Stones' fourth number one in the United Kingdom.
It is one of the world's most popular songs, and was No. 31 on ''
Rolling Stone
''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason.
The magazine was first known fo ...
'' magazine's "
The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list in 2021. It was inducted into the
Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998. The song was added to the
National Recording Registry of the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...
in 2006, the first and so far only Rolling Stones recording to be included in the Registry.
Recording
Keith Richards wrote "Satisfaction" in his sleep and recorded a rough version of the riff on a
Philips cassette player. He had no idea he had written it.
He said when he listened to the recording in the morning, there were about two minutes of
acoustic guitar
An acoustic guitar is a musical instrument in the string family. When a string is plucked, its vibration is transmitted from the bridge, resonating throughout the top of the guitar. It is also transmitted to the side and back of the instrument, ...
before you could hear him drop the pick and "then me snoring for the next forty minutes". Sources vary as to where this story happened. While they make reference to a hotel room at the
Fort Harrison Hotel in
Clearwater, Florida
Clearwater is a city and the county seat of Pinellas County, Florida, United States, west of Tampa, Florida, Tampa and north of St. Petersburg, Florida, St. Petersburg. To the west of Clearwater lies the Gulf of Mexico and to the southeast lies T ...
, a house in Chelsea, and the London Hilton, Richards wrote in his most recent autobiography that he was in his flat in Carlton Hill, St. John's Wood. He specifies that Mick Jagger wrote the lyrics by the pool in Clearwater, four days before they went into the studio,
hence the confusion.
The Rolling Stones first recorded the track on 10 May 1965 at
Chess Studios in Chicago, Illinois,
which included
Brian Jones on harmonica. The Stones lip-synched to a dub of this version the first time they debuted the song on the American music variety television programme ''
Shindig!'' The group re-recorded it two days later at
RCA Studios in Hollywood, California, with a different beat and the
Maestro fuzzbox adding sustain to the sound of the guitar riff.
Richards envisioned redoing the track later with a
horn section playing the riff: "this was just a little sketch, because, to my mind, the fuzz tone was really there to denote what the horns would be doing."
The other Rolling Stones (Jones, Watts, and Wyman), as well as producer and manager
Andrew Loog Oldham and sound engineer
David Hassinger eventually outvoted Richards and Jagger so the track was selected for release as a single.
The song's success boosted sales of the Gibson fuzzbox so that the entire available stock sold out by the end of 1965.
[Sold on Song: '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction']
". BBC. Retrieved 18 December 2008.
Like most of the Stones' pre-1966 recordings, "Satisfaction" was originally released in mono only. In the mid-1980s, a true stereo version of the song was released on German and Japanese editions of the CD reissue of ''
Hot Rocks 1964–1971''. The stereo mix features a piano (played by session player
Jack Nitzsche, who also provides the song's iconic tambourine) and acoustic guitar that are barely audible in the original mono release (both instruments are also audible on a
bootleg recording of the instrumental track). This stereo mix of "Satisfaction" also appeared on a radio-promo CD of rare stereo tracks provided to US radio stations in the mid-1980s, but has not yet been featured on a worldwide commercial CD; even later pressings of the German and Japanese ''Hot Rocks'' CDs feature the mono mix, making the earlier releases with the stereo mix collectors' items. For the worldwide 2002 reissue of ''Hot Rocks'', an alternative quasi-stereo mix was used featuring the lead guitar, bass, drums, and vocals in the center channel and the acoustic guitar and piano "split" left and right via a
delay effect.
Lyrics and melody
The song opens with the guitar riff, which is joined by the bass halfway through. It is repeated three times with the drums and acoustic guitar before the vocal enters with the line: "I can't get no satisfaction." The key is E major, but with the 3rd and 7th
degree occasionally lowered, creating – in the first part of the verses ("I can't get no ...") – a distinctive mellow sound. The accompanying chords (i.e. E major, D major and A major) are
borrowed from the E
mixolydian scale, which is often used in
blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form that originated among African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues has incorporated spiritual (music), spirituals, work songs, field hollers, Ring shout, shouts, cha ...
and
rock.
The title line is an example of a
negative concord. Jagger sings the verses in a tone hovering between cynical commentary and frustrated protest, and then leaps half singing and half yelling into the
chorus, where the guitar riff reappears. The lyrics outline the singer's irritation and confusion with the increasing commercialism of the modern world, where the radio broadcasts "useless information" and a man on television tells him "how white my shirts can be – but he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke the same cigarettes as me", a reference to the then ubiquitous
Marlboro Cowboy style advertisement. Jagger also describes the stress of being a celebrity, and the tensions of touring. The reference in the verse to not getting any "girl reaction" was fairly controversial in its day, interpreted by some listeners (and radio programmers) as meaning a girl willing to have sex. Jagger commented that they "didn't understand the dirtiest line", as afterwards the girl asks him to return the following week as she is "on a losing streak", an apparent reference to
menstruation
Menstruation (also known as a period, among other colloquial terms) is the regular discharge of blood and Mucous membrane, mucosal tissue from the endometrium, inner lining of the uterus through the vagina. The menstrual cycle is characterized ...
. The song closes with a fairly subdued repetition of the song's title, followed suddenly by a full shout of the line, with the final words repeated into the fade-out.
In its day the song was perceived as disturbing because of both its sexual connotations and the negative view of commercialism and other aspects of modern culture; critic Paul Gambaccini stated: "The lyrics to this were truly threatening to an older audience. This song was perceived as an attack on the status quo."
When the Rolling Stones performed the song on ''Shindig!'' in 1965, the line "trying to make some girl" was censored,
although a performance on ''
The Ed Sullivan Show
''The Ed Sullivan Show'' is an American television variety show that ran on CBS from June 20, 1948, to March 28, 1971, and was hosted by New York City, New York entertainment columnist Ed Sullivan. It was replaced in September 1971 by the ''CB ...
'' on 13 February 1966 was uncensored. Forty years later, when the band performed three songs during the February 2006
Super Bowl XL halftime show, "Satisfaction" was the only one of the three songs not censored as it was broadcast. The censored songs were "
Start Me Up" and "
Rough Justice".
Release and success
"Satisfaction" was released as a single in the US by
London Records on 4 June 1965, with "The Under-Assistant West Coast Promotion Man" as its
B-side.
The single entered the
''Billboard'' Hot 100 chart in America in the week ending 12 June 1965, remaining there for 14 weeks, reaching the top on 10 July by displacing the
Four Tops
The Four Tops are an American vocal group formed in Detroit, Michigan in 1953 as the Four Aims. They were one of the most commercially successful American pop music groups of the 1960s and helped propel Motown Records to international fame. The ...
' "
I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)". "Satisfaction" held the number one spot for four weeks, being knocked off on 7 August by "
I'm Henry the Eighth, I Am" by
Herman's Hermits.
[. Retrieved 15 January 2011.] While in its eighth week on the American charts, the single was
certified a
gold record award by the
RIAA
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a trade organization that represents the music recording industry in the United States. Its members consist of record labels and distributors that the RIAA says "create, manufacture, and/o ...
for shipping over a million copies across the United States,
giving the band their first of many gold disc awards in America. Later the song was also released by London Records on ''
Out of Our Heads'' in America.
''Billboard'' ranked the record as the No. 3 song of 1965. ''
Billboard'' said of the single that a "hard-driving blues dance beat backs up a strong vocal performance."
"Satisfaction" was not immediately released by
Decca Records
Decca Records is a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis (Decca), Edward Lewis after his acquisition of a gramophone manufacturer, The Decca Gramophone Company. It set up an American subsidiary under the Decca name, which bec ...
in Great Britain. Decca was already in the process of preparing a
live Rolling Stones EP for release, so the new single did not come out in Britain until 20 August,
with
"The Spider and the Fly" on the B-side. The song peaked at number one for two weeks, replacing
Sonny & Cher's "
I Got You Babe", between 11 and 25 September, before being toppled by
the Walker Brothers
The Walker Brothers were an American pop group formed in Los Angeles in 1964 by John Walker (musician), John Walker (real name John Maus) and Scott Walker (singer), Scott Walker (real name Noel Scott Engel), with Gary Walker (musician), Gary Wal ...
' "
Make It Easy on Yourself".
In the decades since its release, "Satisfaction" has repeatedly been acclaimed by the music industry. In 1976, Britain's ''
New Musical Express
''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming and culture website, bimonthly magazine, and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a " rock inkie", the ''NME'' would become a maga ...
'' listed "Satisfaction" 7th among the top 100 singles of all time. There was a resurgence of interest in the song after it was prominently featured in the 1979 movie ''
Apocalypse Now
''Apocalypse Now'' is a 1979 American psychological epic war film produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The screenplay, co-written by Coppola, John Milius, and Michael Herr, is loosely inspired by the 1899 novella '' Heart of Darkn ...
.'' In 1991,
Vox listed "Satisfaction" among "100 records that shook the world".
In 1999,
BMI named "Satisfaction" as the 91st-most performed song of the 20th century. In 2000,
VH1 listed "Satisfaction" first among its "Top 100 Greatest Rock Songs";
the same year, "Satisfaction" also finished runner-up to "Yesterday" in a list jointly compiled by ''
Rolling Stone
''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason.
The magazine was first known fo ...
'' and MTV.
In 2003, ''
Q'' placed the song 68th out of its "1001 Best Songs Ever". ''
Newsweek
''Newsweek'' is an American weekly news magazine based in New York City. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely distributed during the 20th century and has had many notable editors-in-chief. It is currently co-owned by Dev P ...
'' magazine has called the opening riff "five notes that shook the world".
The song and its opening riff are widely considered both iconic and one of the greatest
musical hooks of all time. "Satisfaction" was ranked number 2 on both
Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list in 2004, and the magazine's list of the band's best songs. A 2021 update ranked the song number 31. In 1998, the song was inducted into the
Grammy Hall of Fame. It was added to the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...
'
National Recording Registry list of sound recordings that "are culturally, historically, or aesthetically important" in 2006.
Jagger commented on the song's appeal:
The song has become a staple at Rolling Stones shows. They have performed it on nearly every tour since its release, and concert renditions have been included on the albums ''
Got Live If You Want It!'', ''
Still Life
A still life (: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, human-m ...
'', ''
Flashpoint'', ''
Live Licks'', ''
Shine a Light'', ''
Hyde Park Live'', and ''
Havana Moon''. One unusual rendition is included in
Robert Frank's film ''
Cocksucker Blues'' from the 1972 tour, when the song was performed by both the Rolling Stones and
Stevie Wonder
Stevland Hardaway Morris (; Judkins; born May 13, 1950), known professionally as Stevie Wonder, is an American and Ghanaian singer-songwriter, musician, and record producer. He is regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th c ...
's band as the second half of a medley with Wonder's "Uptight".
Personnel
According to authors
Andy Babiuk and Greg Prevost:
The Rolling Stones
*
Mick Jagger vocals,
harmonica
The harmonica, also known as a French harp or mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used worldwide in many musical genres, notably in blues, American folk music, classical music, jazz, country, and rock. The many types of harmonica incl ...
*
Keith Richards backing vocals,
fuzz guitar, electric lead guitar, acoustic guitar
*
Brian Jones electric rhythm guitars, acoustic guitar, harmonica, piano,
organ
*
Bill Wyman bass
*
Charlie Watts
Charles Robert Watts (2 June 1941 – 24 August 2021) was an English musician who was the drummer of the Rolling Stones from 1963 until his death in 2021.
Originally trained as a Graphic designer, graphic artist, Watts developed an interest i ...
drums
Additional personnel
*
Jack Nitzsche piano, organ,
tambourine
*
Ian Stewart piano, organ,
marimba
Charts
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
Certifications
Other versions
Otis Redding
Otis Redding recorded a rendition of "Satisfaction" for his album ''
Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul'', released in 1965. Redding claimed that he did not know the lyrics of the song. "I use a lot of words different than the Stones' version," he noted. "That's because I made them up." Of that session,
Steve Cropper said, "...if you ever listened to the record you can hardly understand the lyrics, right? I set down to a record player and copied down what I thought the lyrics were and I handed Otis a piece of paper and before we got through with the cut, he threw the paper on the floor and that was it." Music writer
Robert Christgau
Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and later became a ...
described it as an "anarchic reading" of the Stones' original.
Redding's
soul-style arrangement featured horns playing the main riff,
as Keith Richards had originally intended. In 2003,
Ronnie Wood noted that the Rolling Stones' later concert renditions of the number reflect Redding's interpretation.
Redding performed the song in June1967 at the
Monterey International Pop Festival.
Bubblerock / Jonathan King
English singer-songwriter
Jonathan King released his version in 1974 under the name Bubblerock, reaching No. 29 on the UK Singles Chart.
The Residents
The American
avant-garde
In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...
/
experimental
An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs whe ...
collective
the Residents recorded and released their own performance of "Satisfaction" as a single in 1976. Originally released in an edition of only 200 copies, the cover quickly became a cult sensation, thanks in part to the success of
Devo's cover the following year, necessitating a re-press in 1978 of 30,000 copies.
Brad Laner
Brad Laner (born November 6, 1966, in Los Angeles, California) is an American musician and record producer best known for his work with the shoegaze band Medicine (band), Medicine, which he founded and led.
Prior to Medicine, he was involved i ...
, writing for ''Dangerous Minds'', stated the cover "is nearly everything the better known version by Devo from a year later is not: Loose, belligerent, violent, truly fucked-up. A real stick in the eye of everything conventionally tasteful in 1976 America."
Devo
American
new wave band
Devo released their rendition of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" as a single in 1977, initially in a self-produced version on their own label
Booji Boy Records.
The song was re-recorded with
Brian Eno
Brian Peter George Jean-Baptiste de la Salle Eno (, born 15 May 1948), also mononymously known as Eno, is an English musician, songwriter, record producer, visual artist, and activist. He is best known for his pioneering contributions to ambien ...
as producer for their first album, and that version was also released as a single in 1978, this time by Warner Brothers Records, after it was played for Mick Jagger's approval. The band filmed a video for the song that would later feature regularly on MTV, while a performance on SNL gave them a national profile.
Decades after its release, Steve Huey of
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Mus ...
would write that the cover version "reworks the original's alienation into a spastic freak-out that's nearly unrecognizable". This version of the song was featured prominently in the 1995
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese ( , ; born November17, 1942) is an American filmmaker. One of the major figures of the New Hollywood era, he has received List of awards and nominations received by Martin Scorsese, many accolades, including an Academ ...
epic crime film ''
Casino
A casino is a facility for gambling. Casinos are often built near or combined with hotels, resorts, restaurants, retail shops, cruise ships, and other tourist attractions. Some casinos also host live entertainment, such as stand-up comedy, conce ...
''. Devo's version also featured in
Netflix
Netflix is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service. The service primarily distributes original and acquired films and television shows from various genres, and it is available internationally in multiple lang ...
's series ''
Sex Education
Sex education, also known as sexual education, sexuality education or sex ed, is the instruction of issues relating to human sexuality, including human sexual anatomy, Human sexual activity, sexual activity, sexual reproduction, safe sex, birth ...
''.
Devo's version arose from the group's jam sessions, starting with a guitar part from
Bob Casale, joined by a drum beat by
Alan Myers and a bass part by
Gerald Casale. At first, the band tried the lyrics to "
Paint it Black", switching to "Satisfaction" when it didn't fit the music.
The quirky music video for the song and several others from this album received significant airplay on the upstart
MTV. A notable feature of the video was dancer Craig Allen Rothwell, known as Spazz Attack, whose signature dance move, a forward flip onto his back, drew him significant attention.
Britney Spears
American singer
Britney Spears recorded the song with producer
Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins for her second studio album, ''
Oops!... I Did It Again'', on 24–26 February 2000 at Pacifique Recording Studios in Hollywood. The song was remixed into a
dance-pop and
R&B style.
Spears' version received mixed reviews from critics. While reviewing ''Oops!'',
Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Stephen Thomas Erlewine (; born June 18, 1973) is an American music critic and former senior editor for the online music database AllMusic. He is the author of multiple artist biographies and record reviews for AllMusic, as well as a freelance ...
of
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Mus ...
selected the song as Track Pick, describing "the clenched-funk revision of the Stones' deathless 'Satisfaction'" as emblematic of a "bewildering magpie aesthetic" on Spears' early albums.
Robert Christgau
Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and later became a ...
declared the song a 'choice cut,' meaning a good song on an otherwise lackluster album," while ''
New Musical Express
''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming and culture website, bimonthly magazine, and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a " rock inkie", the ''NME'' would become a maga ...
'' gave the cover a negative review, saying, "the long-awaited
.. pears'cover of the Stones' '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction' is a letdown".
Spears first performed the song on her 2000's
Oops!... I Did It Again Tour. The performance ended with a dance sequence set to the familiar Richards guitar lick that was omitted from her recorded version (played here by her guitarist "Skip").
Spears also performed "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" on a medley with her song "
Oops!... I Did It Again" at the
2000 MTV Video Music Awards.
Other notable versions
*
Frankie Ruiz
José Antonio Torresola Ruiz, better known as Frankie Ruiz (March 10, 1958 – August 9, 1998), was a Puerto Rican singer. He was a major figure in the salsa romántica subgenre that was popular in the 1980s and early 1990s.
During his youth, ...
recorded a 1999 salsa version that peaked at No. 7 on the
''Billboard'' Latin Tropical Airplay chart.
* In 2023,
Dolly Parton
Dolly Rebecca Parton (born January 19, 1946) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, actress, and philanthropist, known primarily as a country music, country musician. After achieving success as a songwriter for others, Parton's debut album ...
teamed up with
Pink
Pink is a pale tint of red, the color of the Dianthus plumarius, pink flower. It was first used as a color name in the late 17th century. According to surveys in Europe and the United States, pink is the color most often associated with charm, p ...
and
Brandi Carlile to record a cover of the song. The track was included on Parton's album titled ''
Rockstar'' released in November.
References
Citations
Sources
*
External links
*
*
The Greatest Songs Ever! Satisfaction at ''
Blender''
*
*
Origin of 'Satisfaction' (2020 article)
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:I Can't Get No Satisfaction
1965 songs
1965 singles
1965 quotations
1976 debut singles
1977 singles
The Rolling Stones songs
Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles
Cashbox number-one singles
Decca Records singles
Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipients
Irish Singles Chart number-one singles
London Records singles
Number-one singles in Australia
Number-one singles in Germany
Number-one singles in Norway
Number-one singles in South Africa
Number-one singles in Finland
Number-one singles in the Netherlands
Number-one singles in Sweden
Obscenity controversies in music
Quotations from music
Satirical songs
Song recordings produced by Andrew Loog Oldham
Songs about consumerism
Songs written by Jagger–Richards
UK singles chart number-one singles
United States National Recording Registry recordings
Warner Records singles