“(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” (14) is a song recorded by the English band the Rolling Stones. A product of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards’ songwriting partnership, it features a guitar riff by Richards that opens and drives the song. The riff by Richards is widely considered one of the greatest hooks of all time. The song was first released as a single in the United States in June 1965 and was also featured on the American version of the Rolling Stones’ fourth studio album, Out of Our Heads, released that July. “Satisfaction” was a hit, giving the Stones their first number one in the US. In the UK, the song initially was played only on pirate radio stations, because its lyrics were considered too sexually suggestive. It later became the Rolling Stones’ fourth number one in the United Kingdom. It is one of the world’s most popular songs, and was No. 31 on Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 Greatest Song of All Time list in 2021.
Otis Redding recorded a rendition of “Satisfaction” for his album Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sing Soul, released in 1965. Redding claimed that he did not know the lyrics of the song. “I use a lot of words different than the Stones’ version,” he noted. “That’s because I made them up.” Of that session, Steve Cropper said, “…if you ever listened to the record you can hardly understand the lyrics, right? I set down to a record player and copied down what I thought the lyrics were and I handed Otis a piece of paper and before we got through with the cut, he threw the paper on the floor and that was it.” Music writer Robert Christgau described it as an “anarchic reading” of the Stones’ original. Redding’s soul-style arrangement featured horns playing the main riff, as Keith Richards had originally intended. In 2003, Ronnie Wood noted that the Rolling Stones’ later concert renditions of the number reflect Redding’s interpretation.
The American avante-garde/experimental collective the Residents recorded and released their own performance of “Satisfaction” in 1976. Originally released in an edition of only 200 copies, the cover quickly became a cult sensation, thanks in part to the success of Devo’s cover the following year, necessitating a re-press in 1978 of 30,000 copies. Brad Laner, writing for Dangerous Minds, states the cover “is nearly everything the better known version by Devo from a year later is not: Loose, belligerent, violent, truly fucked-up. A real stick in the eye of everything conventionally tasteful in 1976 America.
The American new wave band Devo released their rendition of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” as a single in 1977, initially in a self-produced version on their own label Booji Boy Records. The song was re-recorded with Brian Eno as producer for their first album, and that version was also released as a single in 1978, this time by Warner Brothers Records, after it was played for Mick Jagger’s approval. Steve Huey of AllMusic stated that the cover version “reworks the original’s alienation into a spastic freak-out that’s nearly unrecognizable”. This version of the song was featured prominently in the 1995 Martin Scorsese epic crime film Casino.
American pop singer Britney Spears recorded the song with producer Rodney ‘Darkchild’ Jenkins for her second studio album, Oops…I Did It Again, in February 2000 at Pacifique Recording Studios in Hollywood. The song was remixed into a dance-pop and R&B style. Spears’ version received mixed reviews from critics. While reviewing Oops!, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic selected the song as Track Pick, describing “the clenched-funk revision of the Stones’ deathless ‘Satisfaction'” as emblematic of a “bewildering magpie aesthetic” on Spears’ early albums. Robert Christgau declared the song a ‘choice cut,’ meaning a good song on an otherwise lackluster album,” while NME gave the cover a negative review, saying, “the long-awaited […] [Spears’] cover of the Stones’ ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ is a letdown”.
Finally, an inventive version from the BRIT Awards in 1994 perfomed live by PJ Harvey and Bjork. The two artists stand in the centre of a huge stage, surrounded by the glitterati (or at least the ones that could afford it) of the British music scene, about to be swallowed up by the laddish sensibilities of Britpop, defiant and defined in their work, they rose triumphant with a showstopping time under the spotlight. Björk and PJ Harvey stand side by side, dressed in all black, and with just a guitar and a synthesiser, they perform one of the most iconic rock songs in British history. It’s the kind of remarkable performance that looking back, thanks to their impressive careers, feels more poignant than it may have done at the time.
