For nearly 16 years after the initial breakup of The Stone Roses, all of the band’s former members denied any rumors of a reformation. In 2009, John Squire famously released a new piece of artwork which had been inscribed with the text: “I have no desire whatsoever to desecrate the grave of seminal Manchester pop group The Stone Roses.” All four of the ex-Madchester rockers were proven to be liars at a 2011 press conference in which they announced that the long awaited resurrection of The Stone Roses had come. 

One of the Roses’ first concerts back was a massive Manchester homecoming gig played at Heaton Park. Over 70 thousand fans were in attendance and the Heaton Park shows became the fastest selling rock gigs in British history. They subsequently embarked on a world tour that lasted from 2012 to 2013. Near the end of the tour, Ian Brown announced that the Roses had finally started writing new material and that a third album should be expected within the next five years.

Roses fans would not have to wait the whole five years for new material, though. In May 2016, the Roses released their first single in over 21 years: “Beautiful Thing”. Like “Love Spreads” in 1994, “Beautiful Thing” left most listeners massively disappointed. It’s clear why people felt this way. The lyrics are very subpar when compared to the Roses’ earlier releases. The refrain, “All for one, one for all, if we all join hands we’ll make a wall”, sounds like it could have been written by a four-year-old. The instrumental is somewhat interesting, but the melody sounds like an uninspired protest chant that really dulls the whole song. Brown’s voice is also completely shot at this point. His vocals are lacking in any inflection and are straight out of auto-tune hell.

The Roses’ follow up single, “Beautiful Thing”, performed far better than “All for One”. “Beautiful Thing” wasn’t a masterpiece, but it was just baggy enough to satiate the long starved club rats of the Second Summer of Love. The song brought back the Roses classic dance inspired drum beats and featured some cool guitar work from Squire.

Also, in 2016, the Roses would embark on a second world tour. In 2017, at the conclusion of what would be their last show, Brown said to a Glasgow crowd, “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” Two years after this, John Squire would confirm in an interview that the Roses had broken up again without ever releasing a new album.

Unfortunately, I would have to say that looking at the reunion in retrospect, it seems to me that it was mostly just a cash grab. The Roses themselves never really seemed that happy to be performing alongside each other again. Early in their initial tour, Reni even stormed off the stage before the encore at a show in Lyon, France after an argument with the band’s other members. Putting this alongside the facts that they only did two tours over the course of six years and they only released two new singles leads me to believe that money was the overwhelming motivation for the reunion. Mani even said himself that he went from having £1000 in his bank account before the reunion to £1 million afterwards.

The Roses will likely never reform again, which means that unfortunately I’ll never get to see them play live as I only became a fan of theirs a couple years ago. Regardless of whether or not they ever reform, though, The Stone Roses will be remembered for a longtime and have already gone down in musical history as rock legends.

The Stone Roses | All For One

The Stone Roses | Beautiful Thing

On June 9th, 1990, The Stone Roses played at Glasgow Green in what would be their last live performance for almost five years. Many fans even refer to this as their final concert, disregarding everything the Roses would do afterwards.

In 1993, the Roses’ new label, Geffen Records, was growing impatient with the Roses lack of output. They finally demanded that Roses finish their second album or risk being dropped from the label. This prompted the lads to start working. Unfortunately, their return to the studio would not be as productive as their previous sessions. Unlike their debut album, which was recorded at lightning speed, the recording of their sophomore attempt proved to be a long and tortuous process. All of the Roses had recently become fathers which had changed their priorities and strained the writing partnership between Ian Brown and John Squire as the two began to spend less time together. Producer John Leckie had also cut ties with the band during their extended hiatus, so any product they released was bound to sound different from their past works.

In November 1994, the Roses finally released their long-awaited comeback single: “Love Spreads”. The new song was the first track released by the Roses to not feature any writing input from Brown; it was written entirely by Squire. The song became the band’s highest charting single, peaking at number two on the UK Charts. The chart success of the song did not reflect popular opinion though. Hype for the Roses return to the music world was so great in 1994 that they could have released a ten minute recording of Mani farting into a microphone overlaid with Reni shouting racial epithets and it still would have at least cracked the top ten. Although it would go on to receive greater appreciation in later years, many were initially turned off by the song’s departure from the band’s original sound.

While “Love Spreads” retained the dance inspired drum beats the Roses had become known for, the guitar in the song was markedly different from the soft playing of shoegaze tracks like “I Wanna Be Adored”. “Love Spreads” was the band’s most guitar heavy song to date, with Squire abandoning his 60s jangle pop inspired style in favor of a more harsh hard rock sound. To me, it sounds amazing, but I can see how the song might have disappointed 1994 audiences who were expecting the next “Fool’s Gold”.

The following month, the Roses would release their second album, Second Coming. The album would continue to display the fractured partnership between Brown and Squire, as nine of the 13 songs on the album would be written solely by Squire. Only one song, “Begging You”, would be credited to both Brown and Squire.

Second Coming proved to be an even greater disappointment than “Love Spreads”. The album’s Led Zeppelin inspired sound failed to capture the hearts of audiences and fell out of the UK Charts top ten after the first week and never returned.

After the release of Second Coming, the Roses embarked on a worldwide tour that would ultimately kill the band. Before the tour even began, Reni quit the band after a series of arguments with Brown. Roughly a year later, Squire would leave as well. After a disastrous performance at the 1996 Reading Festival in which Brown’s singing was described as “so off-key it was excruciating to have to listen to”, The Stone Roses finally disbanded in October of that year.

Reni would leave the music business after the split while the other three members would go on to pursue other projects. Mani would become the new bassist for Primal Scream and Squire attempted to form a new band, The Seahorses, which lasted only three years before breaking up. Brown had the most successful post-Roses life, beginning a career as a solo artist that would spawn 15 top-40 UK Singles.

Next week, for my final post I will be discussing the Roses’ 2011 reunion and their two 2016 singles: “All for One” and “Beautiful Thing”.

The Stone Roses | Second Coming

Four months after the release of their massively popular self-titled debut album, The Stone Roses capped off 1989 with the release of their nearly ten minute long single, “Fool’s Gold”. The song was the Roses biggest hit at the time of its release, peaking at number eight on the UK Singles Chart.

“Fool’s Gold” deviates from the sound of previous Roses releases. Their trademark 60s-esque jangly guitar riffs are absent, with the Roses leaning more into their dance-rock influences to produce a funkier and more club friendly tune. 

“Fool’s Gold” wastes no time jumping straight into its funky instrumental. There is a one second long percussion intro that transitions straight into the main portion of the song. The Roses’ rhythm section dominates “Fool’s Gold”. Mani plays the song’s famous trembling bassline while Reni provides a drumbeat sampled from James Brown’s “The Funky Drummer”. The guitar parts in the main portion of “Fool’s Gold” are relatively sparse. The song’s guitar is like the icing on the cake that is the drums and bass, with John Squire coming in at the end of the verses and during the choruses to provide some wah-wah soaked licks. The song’s vocals are also different from previous Roses singles. While he was never known as a belter, Ian Brown takes his subdued style of singing to a new level in “Fool’s Gold”. He practically whispers the song’s lyrics. It may sound odd, but it works for this groovy number.

While I do love “Fool’s Gold”, I have to say that it overstays its welcome being nine minutes and 53 seconds long. The main portion of the song lasts about five minutes and concludes with an extended instrumental that could really stand to be shortened by a few minutes.

Before writing this post, I had never really thought about the lyrics of “Fool’s Gold” and after thinking about it, I don’t think that they matter much. I don’t understand them completely, but they seem to describe a group of men on a journey to find gold. They provide a nice backdrop for the song, but “Fool’s Gold” is a dance track that is purely about having fun and losing yourself in the music. Any meaningful analysis of the terribly vague lyrics is unnecessary.

After the release of “Fool’s Gold”, the Roses would release one more single the following year before a four year drought began in which the Roses did not release any new material until 1994. After the success of their debut album and the subsequent singles, the Roses wished to get out of their contract with their independent label, Silvertone, and sign a lucrative deal with a major label. Silvertone, however, took out an injunction against the Roses in 1990 that prevented them from recording any new material with another label. The matter was finally settled in May of 1991 when a British court ruled in favor of the Roses, releasing them from Silvertone. Unfortunately, the whole ordeal proved to be draining for the Roses, and their subsequent recording sessions were very unproductive.

Next week I will be breaking from my format of only discussing singles and talk about the Roses second album, Second Coming, as a whole.

The Stone Roses | Fool’s Gold

The Stone Roses’ eight minute epic, “I Am the Resurrection”, must be one of the greatest album closers of all time. Easily the Roses’ most anthemic song, “I Am the Resurrection” and its many remixes were a favorite at Manchester raves in the late 80s and early 90s. 

“I Am the Resurrection” begins with a short drum intro played by Reni until the song’s bassline, which is actually just the bassline to The Beatles’ “Taxman” played backwards, comes in. The drumming in this song is the most upbeat and punkish of any of the tracks from the Roses’ debut album. Ian Brown sings the first verse with just the bass and drums accompaniment before John Squire comes in on guitar. When the song gets to the chorus, the guitar part has an interesting sort of thumping sound to it that I really dig.

The arrangement of “I Am the Resurrection” differs from previous releases by the Roses that followed the traditional verse-chorus form. In “I Am the Resurrection”, there are three verses and choruses before the song goes into its culminating bridge. The song concludes with a nearly five minute jam that highlights the musical prowess of each of the band’s members. Brown even joins in on the bongos.

The lyrics of “I Am the Resurrection” describe a broken down relationship between two people, one of whom is the messiah. The song is told from the messianic narrator’s point of view and reads like a hate letter for most of the song, with the verses being filled with lines such as, “Stone me why can’t you see, you’re a no one no where washed up baby who’d look better dead.” The tone shifts in the bridge though, with the lines, “I am the resurrection and I am the life, I couldn’t ever bring myself to hate you as I’d like,” lampooning the narrator’s god-complex along with religion in general.

Although “She Bangs the Drums” is my favorite song by the Roses, I believe that “I Am the Resurrection” contains perhaps the greatest single minute of sound in the history of pop music. The song’s minute long bridge that precedes the instrumental outro caught me off guard the first time I listened to it. The first couple minutes of “I Am the Resurrection” are very rhythmic and somewhat rigid, but after the third chorus there is an unexpected drum fill that leads directly into the bridge with Brown proudly proclaiming, “I am the resurrection.” This is one of the best examples of how amazing the production is on the Roses’ debut. I can’t even really tell what’s going on for the most part, I just know that it sounds fantastic.

Typically, I don’t listen to many of the Roses’ live performances specifically because of what a terrible live singer Ian Brown is. However, with “I Am the Resurrection”, Brown’s vocals are the draw for the live recordings. Despite still being horribly off-key, Brown delivers the lyrics with such passion that he could have the voice of Kermit the Frog and I would still happily listen.

Next week I will be discussing the Roses’ first top-10 hit: “Fool’s Gold”.

The Stone Roses | I Am the Resurrection

For those who were musically aware during the late 80s and early 90s but not actual fans of The Stone Roses, there are two songs by the band that they will likely still know. The first of these is “I Wanna Be Adored”. The first single released after the band put out their debut album, The Stone Roses, “I Wanna Be Adored” is one of the Roses’ most beloved songs.

“I Wanna Be Adored” has a strange yet gripping intro. There are no distinguishable instruments for the first 40 seconds of the song, only a mysterious whirring mixture of noises. The best way I could describe the song’s opening sounds is the northern lights in sonic form. The noises’ dominance over the intro ends with the appearance of Mani’s bass. For a band as bass heavy as the Roses were, it is a big deal to award one of their songs the title of “best bassline”, but I have to give it to “I Wanna Be Adored”. Although it is very simple musically, the bassline absolutely makes the song, putting the listener into a hypnotic trance which only deepens with the first notes played by John Squire’s guitar. When I listen to this song I’ll often repeatedly rewind it to hear Squire’s intro over and over. The beginning of “I Wanna Be Adored” is second only to “Elephant Stone” in terms of Roses intros.

The lyrics of “I Wanna Be Adored” are very sparse. There are only three different lines in the main portion of the song. The first two, “I don’t have to sell my soul, he’s already in me”, make up the song’s verses, while the chorus contains the song’s titular line, “I wanna be adored”. While the chorus might fool listeners into thinking the song is about wanting to be loved, the true meaning is more apparent when one focuses on the verse lyrics. In the first two lines, the narrator discusses how he has been possessed by the devil. With this in mind, the “I wanna be adored” line sounds more like a confession of sin than the sigh of a hopeless romantic. The song ridicules those who are vainly obsessed with gaining the approval and adoration of others.

With its position as the first track on The Stone Roses’ legendary self-titled debut album, “I Wanna be Adored” has been the first Roses song that many, including myself, have ever heard. Before I started listening to the Roses, I had been a big fan of the band Oasis. I was listening to an interview with the lead singer of Oasis, Liam Gallagher, and he mentioned that he first knew he wanted to pursue a career in music after attending a Roses show in 1988. Trusting the word of the lee man, I decided to give them a listen starting with their debut album. I was skeptical of the band at first because of the slow buildup of “I Wanna be Adored”, but once that bassline began I was hooked.

Next week I will be discussing the closing track of The Stone Roses’ debut album: “I Am the Resurrection”.

The Stone Roses | I Wanna Be Adored

Expansive theatres were beginning to replace the dingy clubs the Roses had toiled in for years since their founding. With the release of “She Bangs the Drums”, The Stone Roses entered the mainstream. The single was the Roses’ first top-40 hit, peaking at number 36 on the UK Singles Chart in the summer of 1989. “She Bangs the Drums” was also the first Roses song to achieve significant airplay in the United States, reaching number nine on Billboard’s Alternative Airplay Chart.

The song begins with a few seconds of Reni’s hi-hat which is quickly joined by Mani playing the song’s rumbling bass line. About ten seconds in, John Squire’s guitar whooshes in with a brightness that signals the euphoria awaiting the listener for the next four minutes. With the entrance of the guitar, Reni switches to a more exuberant style of drumming that carries the rest of the tune. Ian Brown delivers the verse vocal in his trademark hushed tone before switching to more conventional singing in the choruses.

Like “Elephant Stone”, “She Bangs the Drums” is about a couple that has fallen out of love with each other. The first verse takes place in the present with the narrator expressing disdain for his former lover in lines such as, “Kiss me where the sun don’t sun, the past was yours but the future’s mine, you’re all out of time.” The mood quickly changes for the rest of the song though, as the lyrics go back to the past and detail the joy felt by the narrator when they first fell in love with their former partner. One line from the second verse, the line from which “She Bangs the Drums” takes its name, adequately sums up the rest of the song’s vibe: “I can hear her here she comes, she bangs the drums.” It’s talking about when you have feelings for someone that are so strong it’s like they’re playing drums within your soul that reverberate through every aspect of your being and leave you in a state of absolute euphoria.

Although I started listening to the Roses independently of my parents, I found out through “She Bangs the Drums” that they had been a staple of my mother’s youth. Last May, I was controlling the music in the car on a road trip with my Mom. I had played a couple of Roses songs around her before and she had never commented on them until that day when I put on “She Bangs the Drums”. The second Mani’s bassline started up her face burst into excitement as she exasperatedly started trying to place the band’s name. She recognized the song and a few others from clubs she had been to in the 80s. We never had many common musical interests before this, so it was a great bonding experience for the two of us.

“She Bangs the Drums” is easily my favorite song by The Stone Roses. It may even be my favorite song by any band. The classic Roses jangling guitar, groovy bassline, energetic drumming, and cosmic vocals combine with the finest lyrics Brown and Squire ever penned to create a tune that could turn a dreary trudge through a February blizzard into a summertime beachside skip. 

Next week I will be discussing the Roses’ biggest hit from their debut album: “I Wanna Be Adored”.

The Stone Roses | She Bangs the Drums

In 1989, The Stone Roses would finally start to bloom. By February, the Roses had finished recording all of the songs for their debut album which would be released that June. In March, they released the album’s lead single: “Made of Stone”. Though it wasn’t a massive hit, “Made of Stone” was the Roses’ first single to enter the national charts, peaking at number 90 on the UK Singles Chart.

“Made of Stone” opens with a few seconds of just John Squire playing an arpeggiated riff on guitar before the rest of the band jumps in. The contrast between the rhythm section and the lead guitar parts on this song is mesmerizing. If one were to take apart the different elements of the song and listen to just one at a time, they would have widely different guesses as to what genre of music they were listening to. Squire’s guitar work is straight jangle pop, while Reni’s drums and Mani’s bass could fool one into thinking they were grooving to an EDM backing track.

With “Made of Stone”, we’re starting to get into the territory of Roses’ songs with lyrics that I can’t figure out the overall meaning of. The verses of the song seem like they are detailing a car crash. The lines, “Your knuckles whiten on the wheel, the last thing that your hands will feel, your final flight can’t be delayed,” could describe the crash itself, and later verses such as, “I fall as far as I can see, ten twisted ghouls grin back at me, bad money dies I love the scene,” talk about the crash victim entering hell. This interpretation goes out the window during the choruses though. There is still crash-like imagery in the line, “The cars they burn below me,” but the main refrain, “Sometimes I fantasize, when the streets are cold and lonely,” throws me off. John Squire once said that the song is about having a wish come true. I really don’t see how that relates to the lyrics, but it’s the best explanation that’s been given.

A funny story came from one of the Roses’ performances of the song. For their first national television appearance, the Roses’ played “Made of Stone” on BBC’s The Late Show in late 1989. The song started out fantastic until the first chorus, when all the band’s amplifiers suddenly went dead in the middle of the show. As the presenter tried to transition to the next segment, Ian Brown started ranting in the background about how the show was wasting the band’s time. He loudly shouted “amateurs” several times on live television before the broadcast cut away. The incident amused viewers across the country and helped increase the band’s national profile.

“Made of Stone” isn’t one of my favorite Roses’ songs, but it’s still a classic. I have had a lot of fun picking out the introductory riff on guitar from time to time. Next week I will be discussing the Roses’ first top 40 hit: “She Bangs the Drums”.

The Stone Roses | Made of Stone

Roughly 18 months after the release of Sally Cinnamon, The Stone Roses put out their third single, “Elephant Stone”. The song was the Roses’ first release after signing with record label Silvertone Records. Prominent figures in the Manchester music industry began taking notice of the Roses after “Elephant Stone” was released. I remember watching a video of the Roses performing on The Other Side of Midnight where presenter Tony Wilson mentioned that he disliked the band’s music until he heard “Elephant Stone”, which he thought was fantastic.

This is the first Roses song to highlight the talent of drummer Alan Wren, better known as Reni. “Elephant Stone” begins with the sounds of reversed cymbals playing before Reni launches into a brilliant 36 second drum solo. With each crash of the cymbals and each thwack of the toms, tension builds for the moment when the rest of the band finally jumps in. Mani’s bass grooves sprinkled with John Squire’s heavenly guitar licks carry the intro for another minute before Ian Brown comes in for the first verse. The one minute 49 second instrumental intro is one of the Roses’ finest recorded moments. Far too many times I have been in my bedroom, blasting this song, and absolutely losing myself in this intro. I would be horrified for anyone to see the ridiculous dances the trance of this intro influences me to perform. Unfortunately, the instrumental intro is only featured on the 12” mix of “Elephant Stone”. The 7” version, which began a long tradition of the Roses releasing inferior 7” singles, starts with a brief bit of guitar and then jumps right into the verse. The rest of the song does not disappoint though. The euphoric wave of the intro carries on for the rest of the track with the addition of Ian Brown’s ethereal vocals. 

The lyrics of “Elephant Stone” are quite vague, but they seem to tell the story of a dying love. The song’s opening lines, “Burst into heaven, kiss in the cotton clouds, arctic sheets and fields of wheat, I can’t stop coming down,” detail infatuation and the early stages of love. In the next verse, there are lines such as, “Your shrunken head looking down on my above”, where I have absolutely no idea what they mean, but other lines such as “Send me home like an elephant stone and smash my dream of love” indicate that the lyrics are describing a pair of lovers losing affection for each other. 

Some fans theorize that the words “elephant stone” are meant to sound like Elphinstone, the last name of a British general whose army was massacred during a retreat from Afghanistan in the 1800s. They say that the Roses were comparing the crush of having a relationship end to Elphinstone’s disaster that ultimately ended in his death (The Stone Roses Fansite).

The cover of “Elephant Stone” was the first Roses single to feature one of John Squire’s Pollock-esque paintings. The Roses’ next three singles and their debut album would all have paintings by Squire done in the same style. I’ve always loved these covers. I even have one of them hanging on my wall.

“Elephant Stone” is one of my favorite Roses songs. If I was compiling a list of all their songs I don’t know exactly where it would fall, but it would definitely appear in the top 5. 

Next week I will be discussing the first single that would appear on The Stone Roses debut album: “Made of Stone” (title of the single not the album).

The Stone Roses | Elephant Stone

The sound of The Stone Roses changed dramatically in the two years between the release of their debut single and their second single, “Sally Cinnamon”. Although they would still be largely unknown outside of Manchester for another couple of years, the song would be the band’s first release to enter any chart, peaking at #3 in the U.K. Indie Chart (Official Charts). The single would also be the last Roses track to feature original bassist Pete Garner.

The high energy punk rush of “So Young” was absent from the Roses’ sophomore effort. Instead, “Sally Cinnamon” was characterized by John Squire’s 60’s inspired jangly guitar tone. The guitars in this song remind me a lot of the band The Byrds. The song also saw Ian Brown abandon his horrible wailing vocal style used in “So Young” in favor of a far softer and more melodic approach to singing. The simple melody of “Sally Cinnamon” also makes it so that it is one of the few Roses songs that Brown can consistently nail when performing live.

Unlike most other Roses singles, which would feature lyrical input from John Squire, the lyrics of “Sally Cinnamon” were penned wholly by Ian Brown. The song employs lots of childlike phrases that can be heard in lines such as “Pop, pop, pop, pop, blow, blow bubblegum, you taste of cherryade” and “You have something here to show me from what you are made, of sugar and spice and all things nice”. These lines work to give the song a nice light and innocent feel. Lyrically, “Sally Cinnamon” is a love song. In the first few verses, the narrator speaks of a woman named Sally who pulls them out of a sadness and brightens their life. There is a bit of a twist in the last verse and chorus when it is revealed that the rest of the song was part of a letter written by a woman about her lover that was picked up and read by a stranger in a train station.

“Sally Cinnamon” is possibly the Roses’ most covered song. While scouring through the discographies of different British bands on youtube, I will usually come across a “Sally Cinnamon” cover at some point. I particularly remember enjoying a cover of the song by The Libertines, featuring just frontman Pete Doherty singing and playing an acoustic guitar. I believe a “Sally Cinnamon” cover was the first material by The Stone Roses that I ever heard. I was watching a documentary about the band Oasis and archival footage was shown of guitarist Noel Gallagher playing the opening riff of the song in the background of a rehearsal. I thought it was just a catchy little jam being played during practice. I had no idea about the great song the riff came from. After discovering the Roses a couple of months later, I returned to the documentary primarily to watch that scene again.

Although I don’t think it compares to later releases, I still love Sally Cinnamon. The youthful and carefree lyrics combined with the shimmering guitars are always delightful to listen to. In my opinion, it’s the first song to really capture the magic of what the Roses had in the late 80’s.

Next week, I’ll be talking about the first track in which The Stone Roses display their love of using the word “stone” in songs: “Elephant Stone”.

The Stone Roses | Sally Cinnamon

“In the misery dictionary, page after page after page.” The first line of the first single The Stone Roses ever released did not demonstrate the extraordinary lyrical potential possessed by singer Ian Brown and guitarist John Squire, the bands main songwriters, and ultimately failed to gain the band much attention outside of their hometown of Manchester, England. 

In 1985, the year of the single’s release, the Roses were still searching for an identity as a band. They were years off from attaining their classic lineup and had not come close to developing their signature sound. The sound of “So Young” is far closer to pure punk rock than anything else they would ever produce. Drummer Reni’s typical groovy and complex drumming style is absent in favor of a far more aggressive thrash. Brown’s vocals on this track are also much louder and abrasive than his classic soft whine. I particularly dislike this aspect of the song the most, as I believe that this style of singing just served to highlight the limitations he already had as a singer. His voice is far more listenable on future tracks when he sings in a quieter tone.

The lyrics in the song are, like most Stone Roses songs, pretty vague but lack the captivating imagery, thought provoking statements, and historical references that would redeem the Roses’ later efforts and turn them into classics. They also seem to be somewhat imitating the lyrical style of another popular Manchester band, The Smiths. In fact, “So Young” was originally supposed to be titled Misery Dictionary, but the band decided to switch the name last minute after being warned that the title would likely lead people to believe that they were attempting to imitate The Smiths. The meaning that I am able to get out of the song’s lyrics is that everyone has to get out into the world and make something of their lives.

When I first heard this track I found it to be quite off-putting. Although I did somewhat feel the urge to be like the rest of the sycophantic Roses fans in the Youtube comments praising the song as a misunderstood masterpiece, “So Young” was a track I just could not really get behind. It was one of the last songs in the band’s discography that I listened to and despite it being their first release, I was still not expecting it to be such a departure from their other works. After that first listen, I did not play the song again until I heard it during a scene from a documentary about the Roses’ 2013 comeback tour. I went back to check out “So Young” a couple more times after that and eventually it started to grow on me a tiny bit. Although I may still pop it on once in a while, were it not a Stone Roses track I probably would not have paid it any attention. 

I am not alone in not loving the track. The members of the Stone Roses have repeatedly disavowed “So Young”. Speaking of the song, Ian Brown was quoted saying, “I wouldn’t pay 10p for it now… Sounds like four lads trying to get out of Manchester” (The Stone Roses Website).

After the release of “So Young”, it would be almost another two years until they put out their second single: “Sally Cinnamon”.

The Stone Roses | So Young