Mick Jagger

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• Genre: Pop
• Hometown: London
• Mick Jagger Website

About

The slump of the early 1980s were dark days for Stones fans. When it came out, Undercover sounded like a sheet of plastic hatred, inhumanly cold observations, artificial sounds and videos that featured Keith Richards at his undead, utterly repulsive worst. Today it stands as their last great record (and second-to-last good record), but in 1983 it represented a huge rift in the desires of the Stones' two major contributors. Jagger wanted to move into the glittery world of INXS radio Dance-Pop and Keith wanted to... well nobody really knows what Keith wanted, he just didn't want to play with Mick for a while. So the long-feared split finally occurred and Mick Jagger teamed up with a who's-who of rock royalty for a trio of records that, like Keith's own concurrent solo work, are better than anything the Stones have done since Dirty Work. Beginning in 1985, Jagger managed to break into the charts with songs from each of his efforts. She's the Boss yielded "Just Another Night" and its sleazy title cut, while Primitive Cool (1987) received a warm critical reception in addition to airplay thanks to the weird, antisepti-funk single "Let's Work." While none of Jagger's solo records are among the high points of his career, they do capture him performing with an intensity that got lost somewhere back in the '70s, especially on the Some Girls-like "Sweet Thing" from Wandering Spirit (1993) and his solo-career-moment-of-triumph, "Don't Tear Me Up" which is as good as any late-period Rolling Stones song. Another interesting non-Stones song featuring Mick is the duet with Michael Jackson, "State of Shock," a Hard Rock/dance-funk tune that was one of the only hits off of the re-formed Jacksons' ill-fated Victory album.

- Mike McGuirk