Miss You

"Miss You" is a 1978 hit song by The Rolling Stones, from their album Some Girls.

"Miss You" was written by singer Mick Jagger jamming with keyboardist Billy Preston during rehearsals for the March 1977 El Mocambo club gigs (yielding Side Three of the Love You Live album). Although guitarist Keith Richards is credited for co-writing, Jagger is generally regarded as the principal composer.

Mick Jagger and Ron Wood insist that "Miss You" wasn't conceived as a disco song, while Keith Richards said "...Miss You was a damn good disco record, it was calculated to be one". In any case, what was going on in discos did make it to the recording. Charlie Watts said that "A lot of those songs like Miss You on Some Girls... were heavily influenced by going to the discos. You can hear it in a lot of those four-to-the-floor and the Philadelphia-style drumming." For the bass part Bill Wyman started from Billy Preston's bass guitar on the song demo.[1]. Chris Kimsey, who engineered the recording of the song, said Wyman went "...to quite a few clubs before he got that bass line sorted out.", which Kimsey said "made that song". Jagger sang a good part of the chorus using falsetto "ooh"s often in unison with harmonica, guitar, and electric piano.

Unlike most of Some Girls, "Miss You" features several studio musicians. In addition to Sugar Blue, who according to Ron Wood was found while busking on the streets of Paris, Ian McLagan played understated Wurlitzer electric piano, and Mel Collins provides the saxophone solo for the instrumental break.

The 12" version of the song runs over 8 minutes, and features additional instrumentation and solos, particularly on guitar . It was remixed by Bob Clearmountain, then an upcoming mixer and engineer . This song, the first edit the Rolling Stones did for a 12" single, also contains an additional set of lyrics in the second verse, after the line "Hey, let's go mess and fool around you know, like we used to". However, this version did use some "repeats & tape-loops" in order to construct its length.

"Miss You" became The Rolling Stones' eighth number-one hit in the US on its initial release in 1978. It reached number three in the UK. The song was originally nearly nine minutes long, but was edited to nearly five minutes for the album version, and to three-and-a-half minutes for the radio single, although an eight-and-a-half minutes long "Special Disco Version" was also released on 12-inch single - featuring the track at its longest and most complete. The B-side of the single was another album track, "Far Away Eyes", a tongue-in-cheek country and western tune sung by Jagger in a pronounced drawl.

In 2010, Rolling Stone magazine rated "Miss You" number 498 in its list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.