2000 Great Songs #1196: Get Off Of My Cloud

Welcome to the first entry of 2026. Happy New Year! Hoping for a less terrible year (societally speaking; musically, 2025 was just fine), but in the meantime I'll keep firing off these largely-unread daily missives as my own personal island of sanity.

Turning to today's song...

While the Rolling Stones' run of 60s singles is undeniably great, I don't tend to count them among my favorite Stones songs, largely because of their omnipresent cultural saturation, growing a bit tired from decades of classic rock radio overplay and the inescapable Hot Rocks compilation. But I'll make an exception for 1965's "Get Off Of My Cloud," which has always held a special place in my heart.

As I recounted recently, when I first started obsessing over my radio as a 9-year-old in late 1975 and early 1976, the Stones' "Fool To Cry" was the big Top 40 single, and I hated that song (still do), leading me to the conclusion that this Rolling Stones band was pretty terrible. It took a bit longer for me to pivot to the oldies station, and it was "Cloud" which blew me away. Just that wonderful twin-guitar riff and Charlie Watts' insanely magnetic, never-varying beat, plus the fantastic call-and-response vocal in the chorus; and even as a pre-teen, Jagger's expression of surly just-go-away angst made perfect sense to me.

Live 2006:

Lucinda Williams:

As part of Weird Al Yankovic's "Hot Rocks Polka":

Television's Richard Lloyd: