No. 16: ‘Wild Horses’ – Top 100 Rolling Stones Songs

Ian Stewart, longtime Rolling Stones session keyboardist (and one of the band's original co-founders) often refused to play songs set in minor keys. For that very reason, he sat out of the sessions for 'Wild Horses,' one of The Stones' most heartbreaking ballads -- and the centerpiece of 1971's 'Sticky Fingers.' It's his loss.

'Horses' is one of the group's rare forays into country-rock, and it's also one of the finest examples of the genre during such a fertile period: Built on Nashville-tuned acoustic strums, heartbreaking harmonic pings, and Jim Dickinson's aching piano lines, 'Horses' soars gracefully into the Great Beyond (or possibly Nashville), carried all the way by a classic Jagger vocal.

 

Watch the Rolling Stones Perform 'Wild Horses'