“Tonight and every night…I will be your knight in shining armor…coming to your emotional rescue…”
The fact that Mick Jagger intoned these words in a drawl that made him sound like Lurch from “The Addams Family” notwithstanding, “Emotional Rescue” is a slinky, sexy, funky jam that, to me anyway, was one of the Rolling Stones’ last excellent musical moments. Only “Start Me Up”, “Waiting on a Friend” and the majestic “Out of Tears” have come close since.
Yeah, the song is more or less a shameless ripoff of 1978’s “Miss You”, but a) it’s not like the Stones haven’t been ripping their catalog off for the past 30 years anyway and b) if they’re gonna rip a song off, at least it’s one of their five best all time songs. Jagger’s falsetto here is killer.
In a Falsettometer column, I showed the Thermo-Vision version (say that 5 times fast) of the video. Here is the “normal” (or at least the less Thermo-visioned) version. It’s much easier on the eyes. It’s also a HELL of a lot shorter. They cut out an entire verse. Oh well. Enjoy.
