December's Children (and Everybody's) (1965)


 

  1.She Said Yeah
  2.Talkin' About You
  3.You Better Move On
  4.Look What You've Done
  5.The Singer Not the Song
  6.Route 66
  7.Get Off My Cloud
  8.I'm Free
  9.As Tears Go By
 10.Gotta Get Away
 11.Blue Turns to Grey
 12.I'm Moving On

 

December’s Children (And Everybody’s), released just two months after the highly successful Out of Our Heads, feels more like a product of record company momentum than any kind of artistic intention. These were the days when record labels cared more about volume than vision, and this album—at a mere 28 minutes—feels like it was thrown together just to keep the band in the spotlight.

That doesn’t mean it’s bad. This is still the Rolling Stones, after all. But by now, the formula was starting to show its age. The album kicks off with the frantic She Said Yeah, which barely lasts 90 seconds, and it’s quickly followed by Talkin’ About You, a Chuck Berry cover that sounds more like a rehearsal take than anything essential. This kind of R&B-by-numbers approach was starting to wear thin.

Strangely, the second half of the album packs most of the punch. After a messy live take of Route 66 that falls well short of their earlier studio version, the band closes out the album with three of their strongest early singles. Get Off My Cloud is the undeniable standout—loud, tight, and totally locked in. Then comes I’m Free, which sounds deceptively simple but still holds up surprisingly well (even if most people today remember it from a Microsoft commercial). Finally, there’s As Tears Go By, the Jagger/Richards composition originally recorded by Marianne Faithfull. This version has more weight than hers, and the lush string arrangement still works beautifully.

If someone had taken the time to cherry-pick the best of this record and combined it with highlights from Out of Our Heads, we might be talking about the band’s first truly great album. As it stands, December’s Children is a bit of a mixed bag—light on cohesion, short on runtime, but still a worthwhile listen if only for the handful of timeless tracks tucked inside.


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