Which one is your favorite? - LXXV -

This week's song is coming from the Rolling Stones and most probably it is one of my favorite Stones songs. It is written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and the opening track on their 1968 album Beggars Banquet. It is considered one of the best songs of the popular music era, and it is ranked number 32 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list.

Here is the song for this week;

"Sympathy for the Devil"

"Sympathy for the Devil" is credited to Jagger and Richards, though the song was largely a Jagger composition. The working title of the song was "The Devil Is My Name", having earlier been called "Fallen Angels". Jagger sings in first-person narrative as the Devil, boasting his role in each of several historical atrocities. The singer then ironically demands the listener's courtesy towards him, implicitly chastising the listener for their collective culpability in the listed killings and crimes. 

The lyrics were inspired by "The Master and Margarita", a book by Mikhail Bulgakov. British singer Marianne Faithfull was Mick Jagger's girlfriend at the time and she gave him the book. Faithfull came from an upper-class background and exposed Jagger to a lot of new ideas. In the book, the devil is a sophisticated socialite, a "man of wealth and taste."

The song perpetuated the image of the Stones as frightening bad boys, as opposed to the clean-cut Beatles. It was great marketing for the band, which got some press by implying an interest in the occult.

A documentary by French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard called One Plus One captured the recording of this song, which took place over five days: June 5, 6, 8 - 10, 1968. At one point, a lamp for the documentary started a fire in the studio. The tapes were saved, but a lot of the Stones' equipment was destroyed.

Keith Richards said in 2002: "'Sympathy' is quite an uplifting song. It's just a matter of looking the Devil in the face. He's there all the time. I've had very close contact with Lucifer - I've met him several times. Evil - people tend to bury it and hope it sorts itself out and doesn't rear its ugly head. 'Sympathy For The Devil' is just as appropriate now, with 9/11. There it is again, big time. When that song was written, it was a time of turmoil. It was the first sort of international chaos since World War II. And confusion is not the ally of peace and love. You want to think the world is perfect. Everybody gets sucked into that. And as America has found out to its dismay, you can't hide. You might as well accept the fact that evil is there and deal with it any way you can. Sympathy for the Devil is a song that says, Don't forget him. If you confront him, then he's out of a job." 

Some of the historical events mentioned in this song are the crucifixion of Christ, the Russian Revolution, World War II, and the Kennedy assassinations. Robert Kennedy was killed on June 5, 1968, after Mick Jagger started writing the song. His original lyric was "who killed Kennedy?" referring to the 1963 John F. Kennedy assassination, but he changed it to "who killed the Kennedys?"

Here are the 7 versions I picked for you;

• Guns N' Roses - "Sympathy For The Devil"

• Natalie Merchant - "Sympathy For The Devil"

• Bryan Ferry - "Sympathy For The Devil" 

• Jane's Addiction - "Sympathy For The Devil"

• Motörhead - "Sympathy For The Devil"

• Ann Wilson - "Sympathy For The Devil"

• The Big Push - "Sympathy For The Devil"

Now the floor is yours, go ahead and make your comments (here, Instagram, Facebook wherever you feel like...).

nb. Please note that I intentionally do not include the original versions of the songs as it would be a little unfair to the artists covering the songs, and I am sure that sometimes you will be surprised to see that the songs you thought were the originals are just covers.