It’s an easy mistake to make believing that all hit songs come fully formed from the get-go, spewing from the artist’s guitar or drum set as easily as someone whistling “Happy Birthday.”
But in reality, great songs take time to mature and form, with musicians typically laboring over them for months, if not years.
As a perfect illustration of this point, Keith Richards recently revealed that it took about 10 years to complete the Rolling Stones’ now iconic 1981 track, “Start Me Up,” with the song undergoing a decade’s worth of tweaks and revisions.
Speaking with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, the 82-year-old Richards spoke on a variety of topics, including the Stones’ new song, “Some Us,” which the musician said had been forming in his mind for quite some time.
“That song had been hanging around in the head for years and years. I never quite got around to putting the finger on it,” Richards said. “Some songs are very elusive.”
As an example, Richards then went on to cite “Start Me Up” as a notably frustrating creative endeavor, one that took about 10 years of continuous work until it saw the light of day.
“I remember ‘Start Me Up’ was 10 years from the writing of it to when it came out,” he started by saying.
“It’s like wine, good wine, some of it’s better aged,” the artist continued. “I remember the first hundred takes were reggae rhythm. It went through a lot of styles before we said, ‘Hey, why don’t we just play rock and roll?’”
“That’s the one that made it,” he concluded.
Released on the Rolling Stones’ sixteenth album Tattoo You, “Start Me Up” quickly reached number 1 on Australia, Canada, Spain and U.S. Billboard Mainstream Rock charts. In addition to reaching number 7 on the U.K. singles chart, the song climbed to the number 2 position on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.