'Sway,' The Rolling Stones
From 1971's 'Sticky Fingers'

I must have cued this song up a couple hundred times, and I couldn't tell you a single lyric. Mick Jagger's alternately howling and dazed vocals (dude manages to squeeze four syllables out of what sound like four-letter words) are no sonic match for Mick Taylor's guitar barrage. In fact, Taylor (the Stones' Brian Jones upgrade) is so thunderous here that a heroin-afflicted Keith Richards didn't even bother to play on this one. (Conventional wisdom also has Taylor as the co-writer of this song with Jagger, but you won't find any evidence in the credits).

Overshadowed by its illustrious neighbors -- it's sandwiched between 'Brown Sugar' and 'Wild Horses' on 'Sticky Fingers' -- 'Sway' also features nifty piano work by Nicky Hopkins and an epic string arrangement by Paul Buckmaster (who's worked on everything from David Bowie's 'Space Oddity' to Guns N' Roses' -- wait for it -- 'Chinese Democracy').

Halfway through 'Sway,' Jagger manages to punch through Taylor's toxic concoction with a noble cry of 'Hey, hey, heyyy, nowww' (or something like that), but the guitarist soon takes control again with the Stones' most muscular licks this side of 'Can't You Hear Me Knocking' (and, yep, that was him too). Tired of being treated like a second-class Stone, Taylor would quit the band three years later. The Stones would occasionally achieve greatness without him, but never again this explosiveness.

Hear the song after the jump.

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