10 Late Career Bangers From Huge Rock Bands
3. The Rolling Stones - Doom & Gloom (2012)
In 2012, the Stones celebrated their fiftieth anniversary. They toured the world, they launched an art exhibition, they released a career retrospective documentary and book, and they released a multi-disc greatest hits record.
Essentially, they did what you would expect a band in the heritage act stage of their career would do to exploit the big 5-0. What you might not expect, is that the inevitable single from said compilation is, unlike Don’t Stop, the equivalent song from the fortieth anniversary best of, the best new song Mick and Keith had written in thirty years (since Start Me Up, in case you were wondering).
It may not have reinvented the wheel, but Doom & Gloom is exactly what single by The Rolling Stones should be. It rocks, it rolls, it shimmers, it shakes; Mick charismatically shouts some nonsense about being on a plane, Keith and Ronnie trade Chuck Berry licks with classic RNB riffs and Charlie (RIP) pounds the skins like he’s had nothing else to do for half a century. It’s a four-minute hoot (or is it a honk?) that let us know they could still do it when they wanted to.