To me “You Can’t Always Get What
You Want” is one of the best songs of all time (in my top 10 songs) and one of
the most positively emotionally resonant rock songs ever made. In fact in my
opinion this song approaches a spiritual and religious experience that no other
song I’ve heard in rock music has ever captured.
I know people may baulk with the
idea of The Rolling Stones writing “spiritual” and “emotionally resonant” songs
during this period and there are people who
even believe “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” to be a pessimistic song
reflecting the end of the idealism of flower power at the end of the 60’s. So I
have to give some context why I feel that way about this song.
I'll mention I do come from a family with a Buddhist background. One of the key
tenants of that religion is the idea that happiness can't be fulfilled by
external forces and the environment as it is out of your control. The idea is
that our desires or “attachment” is the root cause of unhappiness. People desires and want can never be fully
satisfied and the only way to reach happiness is by accepting that "You
Can't Always Get What You Want" and that you’ll have to be happy despite whatever you face in life. For someone to be truly happy, there happiness has to be
unconditional. As long as you put conditions to your happiness then the person
is destined to be unhappy and dissatisfied with life. Whether Jagger/Richards
intended it or not, I believe this song captures that message perfectly. Who knows
maybe they did intend it as Mick Jagger is a practising Buddhist.
So after the choir intro (that I
always felt a bit tacked on), the song starts off with just plain acoustic
guitar strumming with Jagger painting a bleak picture of a women drinking her
sorrows with wine about her relationship with a man who display no commitment or
responsibilities. Then Jagger starts singing in a mournful way "You can't
always get what you want" however the organ appears with some chords and there
is this gorgeous descending and ascending piano line (one of the best keyboard
moment in rock music IMO). To me that combination of the piano and organ
signifies a religious epiphany where the protagonist discovered “the truth"
and he sings “But if you try sometime you find” and then the female gospel
singer joins in and sings “You get what you need" which explodes into
music that is filled with joy. You see the protagonist realized the basic truth
“that you get what you need” (which is happiness) when you accept that “you
can't get what you want” and the song explodes into one of the most joyful and
soulful music you can ever hear signifying the wave of happiness out of
discovering that “truth”.
Also notice that throughout the
following verses, the music still remain joyful despite the lyrics about the
various disappointments various characters experience in life which signifies
that the person is remaining happy despite the troubles in life. Also notice
how the chorus throughout the song differs to the chorus at the beginning as
the first chorus sounds sad and desperate with the sparse arrangement and the absence
of the female backing vocalist until the “epiphany” but in later chorus the
female backing vocalist sings at the beginning of the chorus signifying that
the character of the song is embracing the joyfulness of not getting what he
wants.
For a person who is raised in a Buddhist family but grew up in a Western culture, this song resonated with
me especially as it is in my opinion a perfect synthesis of Eastern Buddhist
philosophy with Western music. Gospel music is a western music that is
associated with spiritual joy with Christianity and it is an ingenious
arrangement choice to mesh that spiritual joy with the line that is
superficially pessimistic “You can’t always get what you want” to bring out the
message that spiritual joy is derived by realizing that message. The female gospel backing vocalist that
jumped in throughout the song did the perfect job in delivering that message. This song is a perfect example of how the arrangement
can be used to craft the message of the song
