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Rolling Stones to re-release Wild Horses

By | Published on Monday 23 November 2009

To coincide with the release of ‘Britain’s [Apparently] Got Talent’ star Susan Boyle’s debut single, ‘Wild Horses’, Universal/Polydor have announced that it will re-release The Rolling Stones’ original version as part of a special digital bundle featuring three versions of the track.

Recorded almost exactly forty years ago in December 1969, the original version of the song was the last of three songs that came out of Stones sessions at Muscle Shoals in Alabama, after ‘Brown Sugar’ and ‘You Gotta Move’, and appeared on the band’s 1971 album ‘Sticky Fingers’. It’s notable only because it’s bloody awful.

However, the version recorded backstage during the band’s ‘Voodoo Lounge’ tour in 1995, and included on the ‘Stripped’ live album, is completely amazing, so you’ll be pleased to know that it is also part of the bundle, along with a video of a live performance of the song recorded at Knebworth in 1976.

The bundle is released today via all good download stores (as is the Boyle version), and it would be marvellous if the ‘Stripped’ version charted because, like I said, it’s brilliant.

The decision of Universal to cash in on Boyle’s high profile cover version, and the accompanying customary ‘X-Factor’ performance, is rather clever, and perhaps a sign the majors are waking up to the potential of staging low-cost digital catalogue releases whenever one of their catalogue songs becomes newsworthy, especially through some high profile telly exposure. You’ll remember Leona Lewis singing ‘Run’ on ‘X-factor’ last year helped a resurgence of interest in the Snow Patrol original, meaning an impromptu sales boost for their label, Universal’s Fiction.



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