Wild Horses

The Rolling Stones recorded Wild Horses in December 1969 at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama, though it did not appear until Sticky Fingers in 1971. Keith Richards had the riff and the chorus line, and Mick Jagger wrote the verses, producing a ballad about a bond nothing can pull apart. Couples choose it for the slow sway of the tempo, the country tinge in the guitars and the sense that it has been lived in rather than polished. The Flying Burrito Brothers, led by Gram Parsons, released their own version in April 1970, nearly a year before the Stones put out theirs, after Parsons asked to cover it and the band sent him a mix.