The Rolling Stones’ Emotional Rescue Dances Around Ambition and Lands on 8 Out of 10

The Rolling Stones made Emotional Rescue in 1980, and the record wants to sound like a party. It wants to move feet without asking much of them. Ten tracks, 41 minutes, and a running order built around a central idea: the band is tired, and it wants to dance anyway.

This is a record about motion and stillness at once. It is also a record about the Stones being the Stones, even when the songs themselves have nothing new to say.

Dance Opens the Record

Dance opens the record as a statement of intent. Pt. 1 sets the pace — driving, repetitive, built for a room full of people moving together. It earns its place. The track knows exactly what it is, and it does not pretend otherwise.

Summer Romance follows, and this is where the record starts to slip. It is built on a similar pulse, but the song underneath the pulse is thinner. It is easy to hear and harder to remember after the record ends.

Send It to Me is the strongest moment in the middle stretch. It has a hook that sticks, and the band plays with a confidence that the rest of the record does not always match. It is the track that proves the record can still land a blow, even when the rest of the album leans on repetition instead of invention.

Let Me Go closes this stretch with a sense of urgency that the record does not fully earn. It is better than Summer Romance, but it sits on the same ground — a groove that feels finished before the song itself is over.

Indian Girl Through She’s So Cold

Indian Girl is the oddity of the record. It stands apart from the dance tracks around it, and it earns that distinction through a melody that refuses to settle into the pattern the rest of the record follows. It is the clearest sign of ambition on the whole record.

Where the Boys Go is a lesser cousin to the songs around it. It has energy, but it lacks the shape that would make it memorable. It passes without leaving much of an impression behind.

Down in the Hole is the record’s low point. It is built on a beat that repeats with little variation, and it offers almost nothing underneath that surface. This is the track that critics pointed to when they described the record as hollow.

Emotional Rescue is the title track, and it is the song that the record is named for. It is the most direct attempt at a big, sweeping Stones anthem on the record, and it mostly works. It is not a great song, but it is a good one, and it gives the record its center.

She’s So Cold closes the album’s second half with a hook that is bigger than anything else here. It is the most purely enjoyable track on the record, even if it does not reach the heights of the best Stones material from earlier years.

All About You Closes the Record

All About You ends the record on a note that sums up everything that came before it. It is a solid, unremarkable closer that does not ask for much attention, and it does not get it.

The Verdict

Emotional Rescue is not a great Rolling Stones record, but it is not a bad one either. It is a mixed bag of danceable tracks and hollow disco-influenced duds, and the two sit side by side without ever really resolving the tension between them.

The best tracks — Dance (Pt. 1), Send It to Me, Let Me Go, She’s So Cold — show what the band could do when it reached for something new. The rest of the record shows what happens when the band settles for comfort instead of invention.

There is hardly a melody here you haven’t heard from the Stones before. That is both a compliment and a complaint, depending on which track you are listening to.

The record is at its best when it commits to a groove and lets it run. It is at its worst when it tries to fill space with a beat that has nothing underneath it.

Emotional Rescue is a record of peaks and valleys, and the peaks are high enough to justify the listen, even when the valleys are low enough to frustrate.

Final Word

The record is a portfolio of burned-out cases, as one review put it, and that description holds up. The band is clearly working through something, and the music reflects that. Some of those cases are worth sitting with; others are not.

It is a record that rewards attention on its own terms, even if those terms are not always demanding ones. It is not a classic, but it is not a failure either. It is a record that knows what it is and mostly delivers on it, even when it does not reach for anything beyond that.

8 of 10.

Key Facts Box

• Artist: The Rolling Stones
• Year: 1980
• Tracks: 10
• Total running time: 41 minutes
• Title track: Emotional Rescue (5:39)
• Best tracks: Dance (Pt. 1), Send It to Me, Let Me Go, She’s So Cold

1980 · album review · classic rock · disco · Rolling Stones