THE ROLLING STONES – “Ruby Tuesday”
And “Manic Monday” is just the start – the names-of-days/pop music connection is deep and baleful. Take this self-pitying bloater of a track, for instance. It’s fairly stupid to have a chorus which goes “Who could hang a name on you?” when the title of the song is a name. But that’s not the main issue. The main issue is that the Rolling Stones were execrable at ballads. Probably because the R and B bands they so slavishly aped didn’t do much in the ballad line, the Stones tended to sound completely lost when they slowed it down, sliding into hideous cod-Medievalisms (the even worse “Lady Jane”, where Mick Jagger comes off like the capering minstrel at the end of a Blackadder episode) and sickly over-enunciation. Jagger pronounces every verse word in “Ruby Tuesday” like he’s speaking at a Debating Society: a particularly insincere performance from a man who’s made a too-long career of them.