Exile On Main St.

[METALMAN]

As you may or may not know, this has recently been reissued and is (I believe) top of the charts.

Just wondering what you think of this.

Personally I don't rate it as highly as many. How can an album with a song called "Turd On The Run" be all that great? >_>

It's always struck me as the Rolling Stones' "White Album", given that the proper songs seem to be spliced apart by various doodles and half songs, as well as the ramshackle nature of its recording. However, it seems to lack the simple charm of it's plain-covered counterpart.

Exile's by no means a bad album. "Rocks Off" is one of my favourite opening tracks to an album ever, "Tumbling Dice" is a lovely song and "Sweet Virginia" is very possibly my favourite Rolling Stones song. What I can't stand - even more so than the doodles and such - is the ballads like "Loving Cup" and "Shine A Light". I just don't like Rolling Stones ballads at all. This is possibly because I feel that they sound best when they sound raw and loose - this is the main reason why I can't stand post-Exile Stones' output; it sounds far too polished and just not right. I mean, even some of their 80s and 90s songs could have sounded better were they given a different production. I also prefer their live albums for this reason.

So yeah, Exile On Main Street's alright but is it really worth the fuss? Or does it only get so much attention for being their last meaningful album?

[Crybaby Bunting]

It gets so much hype because non-fans can listen to the first few songs, notice how awesome they are, trail off and then claim this to be their best album of all time.

Sticky Fingers is MILES better than this and features some of their best singles.

[Skummy]

It's actually shit. Lots of rock and roll cliché and posturing, but not a single really good song. Sticky Fingers, Beggar's Banquet and Let It Bleed are all much better albums, with infinitely better stand-out tracks.

[METALMAN]

I'm not actually a huge fan of Sticky Fingers. I put that down to not really liking any of the singles from it, although I do like most of the album tracks. I'm really fond of Let It Bleed and Beggar's Banquet, though my favourite studio album by them is probably Aftermath.

Generally when it comes to Rolling Stones this and this is all I really need.