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TL;DR:

  • Mick Jagger wanted The Rolling Stones’ “Angie” to be like the ballad “Lady Jane.”
  • Keith Richards said “Angie” was originally just supposed to be a working title.
  • “Angie” became a bigger hit in the United States than it was in the United Kingdom.
Keith Richards on a couch during The Rolling Stones' "Angie" era
The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards | George Rose/Getty Images

Mick Jagger said The Rolling Stones‘ “Angie” was supposed to sound like some of the band’s earlier ballads. Keith Richards initially had a problem with the song’s title. Subsequently, he explained how and why he came to embrace the title “Angie.”

Keith Richards didn’t like the name of The Rolling Stones’ ‘Angie’ at 1st because it was ‘another chick’s name’

“Angie” is one of The Rolling Stones’ most famous ballads. According to Mick Jagger in His Own Words (as quoted in The Billboard Book of Number 1 Hits), Jagger said “Angie” was supposed to be a throwback. He wanted the tune to be like earlier Rolling Stones ballads such as “Back Street Girl” and “Lady Jane.”

In the 2013 book 50 Licks: Myths and Stories from Half a Century of The Rolling Stones, Richards said he initially took issue with the title “Angie.” “Sometimes you have a hook, a phrase or a word or a name or something which maybe you don’t even intend to keep,” he said. “A classic example is ‘Angie,’ it was just a working title, like who’s gonna call a song ‘Angie,’ how boring, another chick’s name you know?”

Keith Richard discussed how The Rolling Stones’ ‘Angie’ retained its working title even though Richards disliked it as 1st

Richards discussed how the title of “Angie” stuck. “But when you come around to actually writing the song and you sing ‘Angie, Angie,’ eventually you have to live with it and say, ‘This song’s ‘Angie,'” he said. “Whether you intended it to be or not, that’s what it is. Sometimes you cannot get out of it, it’s meant to be there and you have to accept it.” 

Richards discussed how titles come to be in other ways. “Other times, maybe the way somebody’s playing something will suggest a word or a phrase that nobody’s thought of before,” he revealed. “Songs just come about in so many different ways.”

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How the song and its parent album performed on the charts in the United States and the United Kingdom

“Angie” became a massive hit in the United States. The tune topped the Billboard Hot 100 for a single week. It stayed on the chart for 16 weeks. “Angie” appeared on the album Goats Head Soup, which topped the Billboard 200 for four weeks. The album spent a total of 39 weeks on the chart.

According to The Official Charts Company, “Angie” wasn’t quite as popular in the United Kingdom. There, it reached No. 5 and stayed on the chart for 10 weeks. On the other hand, Goats Head Soup reached No. 1 in the U.K. for two weeks and remained on the chart for 14 weeks.

“Angie” had a throwback title and Richards eventually came to embrace it.

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