Townswoman Citizen Mom, inspired by the taunting of Rock Town Hall’s anti-Ron Wood stance, decided to defend the band’s Tattoo You album. For fear of being excomunicated from the Halls of Rock, Citizen Mom originally published this piece in econoculture.com. After reassurances that any stance is worth taking on Rock Town Hall, she decided to come forward and share her views with us. For this, we thank you!

Journey with me, if you will, back to a time not so long ago – a time when The Rolling Stones were still a viable rock band, before they just started sending the fossilized remains out on tour every few years. Before Keith Richards had shit growing out of his hair, before Jerry Hall finally threw Mick out for good, before they had daughters tall and gorgeous enough to be the kind of women their fathers would date.

During that dusky time, between when the sun set on disco and rose on “Thriller” and hair metal, even a bunch of castoff tracks from previous Stones albums, slapped together with a few new numbers so the band could have something to promote on an upcoming world tour, could kick ass.

That time, my friends, was 1981, and the album was Tattoo You, also known as the Last Great Rolling Stones Record and the band’s last full-length release to hit #1 on the American charts. It’s pretty well buried under the mountain of undeserved rockist scorn, but there are some damn fine songs lurking between “Start Me Up” and “Waiting On a Friend,” the two wildly successful singles that bookend the album.

Still, the snitch keep snitchin’ and the bitches keep bitchin’, and when I pitched this piece to Econo, the response I got back from my editor went like this: “I dare you to defend that crap album. ‘Waiting on a Friend’ is great. But the rest — ugh. Do we really need to hear ‘Start Me Up’ ever again?”

Yeah, we’ve all heard “Start Me Up” a million times, but should its Awesome ’80s ubiquity doom the entire album? I blame this on that friggin’ bodysuit — you know what I’m talking about:

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