1978 Hit, Originally 9 Minutes Long, Was This Legendary Rock Band’s Final No. 1 U.S. Single

Born out of a jam session between Mick Jaggerand Billy Preston, the song “Miss You” by The Rolling Stones became the first single for the Some Girls album. Keith Richards ended up being credited as a co-writer on the track, as was the case with all originals by The Stones.

There is some discrepancy within the band about what type of song they’d conceived. Richards was adamant that they handed created a disco track, whereas Jagger insisted the song was a fabulous disco number saying, “‘Miss You’ was a damn good disco record; it was calculated to be one.”

Regardless, what was happening in dance clubs and discos at the time heavily influenced the track with the song featuring several studio musicians unlike most other Stones songs. Bassist Bill Wyman claimed the riff he put in “Miss You” was copied for an entire year after the fact by everyone from Rod Stewart to “every band in the world.”

The original recording of “Miss You” clocked in at over nine minutes long but was edited down to five minutes for the album, and three-and-a-half minutes for the radio version. Separate mixes were constructed and then edited for continuity’s sake when constructing the edited versions for radio.

“Miss You” was released on May 10th, 1978 and went on to be the last number-one single in the United States for The Rolling Stones. The song hit the top five on the charts in August of 1978, and it peaked at number three in the United Kingdom.

Multiple live versions of “Miss You” have been recorded over the years. A first was captured during the Rolling Stones’ 1989–1990 Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle Tour and was included on the 1991 live album, Flashpoint. The November 1981 performance included on Let’s Spend the Night Together was also recorded, as was the July 1995 performances released on Totally Stripped in 2016.

When creating their list of the “500 Best Songs of All Time,” Rolling Stone magazine listed “Miss You” at 498.

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