The one Rolling Stones song Mick Jagger struggled to sing: “I didn’t really hit the notes that great”
(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Wed 31 December 2025 15:40, UK
Mick Jagger feels more like a superpowered frontman these days than an actual rock star.
While most artists have tried their best to dominate the stage whenever they play, no one can claim to have put hours behind the microphone and still be able to sing as well as Jagger does across over half a century of being in the same group. That’s not to say that Jagger doesn’t have his pitfalls, and he admitted that the song ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knockin” would always be a challenge for him to pull off.
Once The Stones started writing their own tunes, though, there didn’t seem to be anything off the table for Jagger to sing. Outside of the blues growl that he was known for in the early days, there were just as many times that he could turn on the crooner voice when putting together tracks like ‘As Tears Go By’.
If anything, the fact that The Beatles kept innovating meant that The Stones were always right behind them. Jagger couldn’t always put his voice through different acrobatics, but he could still turn on the fruitiness when making Between the Buttons or twisting his blues-infused tone until it sounded psychedelic on Their Satanic Majesties Request.
After making Beggars Banquet, Jagger learned an important lesson about his voice: it’s better to be yourself. Although those experiments were still incredible for what they were, hearing him go back to the ratty blues voice that he had started with was just the kind of tone that he worked best in.
When it came time to make Sticky Fingers, though, the riff that Keith Richards came up with or ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’’ was going to be difficult for him to sing, telling Spotify, “I [did] lots of vocals, harmonies to sort of hide the fact that I didn’t really hit the notes that great in the chorus bits.”
Mick Jagger strutting his stuff. (Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
You can usually hear those vocals a lot more prominently whenever the title of the song drops, almost like a gang of different Jaggers have suddenly entered the room whenever he fires one off. But does that really mean that every one of Jagger’s vocals wasn’t good enough to be sung?
Not at all. If anything, the fact that his vocal is a bit rough around the edges actually fits a lot better with the character behind the song. The track is meant to be a loose blues jam centred around a man knocking at his old lady’s door, so hearing him screaming is the equivalent of Jagger waiting outside begging for some kind of romantic relief.
It’s also one of Richards’ favourite riffs from the band: “On that song, my fingers just landed in the right place, and I discovered a few things about that [five-string, open G] tuning that I’d never been aware of. I think I realised that even as I was cutting the track.”
The luck continued as the iconic final jam sessions were never meant to be recorded. “And then that jam at the end – we didn’t even know they were still taping. We thought we’d finished,” Keef continues, “‘Oh they kept it going. Okay, fade it out there – no wait, a little bit more, a bit more…’ Basically, we realised we had two bits of music: there’s the song and there’s the jam.” Luckily, Richards is there to help and delivers a spellbinding opening riff for ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knocking’ that will go down in the annals of rock.
Outside of Jagger’s vocal enhancements, the star of the show is that outro featuring some of the greatest guitar fills that Richards and Mick Taylor had ever recorded together. The band didn’t even know that the tape was still rolling towards the end of that extended instrumental, but it just adds to the mystery of the tune. This is a bluesy dirge of desperation, and if Jagger’s voice couldn’t reach those high notes, the guitar duel waiting at the back end of the tune was enough to keep things rolling.
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