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Smack-talking Motown royalty is a bold move, but in 1965, The Rolling Stones were practically addicted to daring the impossible. Choosing to record My Girl was less about paying tribute to a soul standard and more like a high-stakes experiment in whether grit could successfully camouflage as polished, heartfelt elegance. While Temptations purists might still be clutching their pearls, the band’s attempt to trade their usual blues-fueled swagger for Motown-style restraint remains one of their most bafflingly audacious studio pivots. It is a strange, shimmering artifact of a band proving they could—or perhaps shouldn’t—tackle anything, even pure pop perfection.
I go so much honey, the bees envy me/ I’ve got a sweeter song, baby, than the birds in the trees…
Written by: Robinson/White Recorded: RCA Studios, Hollywood, USA, May 11-12 1965; IBC Studios, London, Aug. 31-Sept. 2 1966
Mick Jagger: vocals Keith Richards: lead guitar, rhythm guitar, backing vocals Brian Jones: rhythm guitar Bill Wyman: bass Charlie Watts: drums Guest musicians: The Mike Leander Orchestra (strings, horns)
More about The Rolling Stones’ take on My Girl
*By Marcelo Sonaglioni
A song that defines affection and comparison
Few songs arrive already crowned as classics, and My Girlwas one of them almost from the moment it hit the airwaves. Written by Smokey Robinsonand Ronald White as a personal love letter disguised as a pop single, it carried an intimacy that felt both universal and specific. When The Temptations recorded it, David Ruffin’s voice gave that tenderness a public heartbeat, turning private devotion into collective memory. Success followed quickly, but with success came a kind of permanence: My Girl stopped being just another hit and became a measuring stick, one of the most played and recognizable soul recordings of the 1960s.
Any artist approaching it afterward would be stepping into a space already filled with affection, nostalgia, and expectation. This is what makes the Rolling Stones’ later decision to cover the song so intriguing. Their version wasn’t simply a nod to Motown; it was a quiet confrontation with an untouchable standard, a test of whether reinterpretation could coexist with reverence.
Motown’s perfect moment
By early 1965 My Girlhad done more than top charts—it had helped define what Motown could be at its most elegant and emotionally direct. The label specialized in polish without losing feeling, and this song balanced both effortlessly. Its success marked a turning point for The Temptations, elevating them from promising contenders to front-line stars. The track’s charm lay in its restraint: simple lyrics, a memorable melody, and an arrangement that never crowded the sentiment. It became one of those rare records that felt inevitable, as though it had always existed and merely waited to be discovered. That sense of inevitability is important, because it left very little open space for later reinterpretations. Once a song becomes synonymous with a particular voice and era, it resists transformation—and My Girl would go on to be covered by hundreds of artists across genres, further reinforcing its canonical status.
The Stones and American soul
The Rolling Stones’ early catalog was built on devotion to American music, particularly soul, blues, and R&B. They covered a wide range of such material, and most of those tracks were both artistically successful and well received by audiences. Typically, they gravitated toward songs that were relatively obscure, at least to mainstream white audiences, giving them room to reshape the material with their own grit and attitude. My Girlwas a different proposition. When the Stones recorded it for the Flowerscompilation in 1967, the original hit was still fresh and omnipresent. Rather than dismantling the song, the band chose a respectful approach that stayed close to its core. That decision may have been their first misstep, as comparison to the Temptations’ definitive version was unavoidable, leaving little space for reinvention.
A performance caught in between
Much of the criticism directed at the Stones’ My Girlcenters on its uneasy balance. Mick Jagger sings in a lower register than usual—especially on the chorus—and sounds less comfortable than he typically did on soul ballads. More significantly, the band doesn’t inject much of its own personality into the track. Unlike their strongest covers, where reinterpretation was the point, this version feels cautious, as if the song itself resisted transformation. The arrangement adds to that tension. Strings and orchestration soften the edges, a choice that felt out of character for a group known for raw energy, even if orchestration had appeared before in their work. The result isn’t disastrous, despite some harsh critical judgments, but it remains one of the least celebrated soul covers in their catalog.
Afterlife and reassessment
The Stones’ own lukewarm view of the recording is hinted at by its absence from their UK releases during the 1960s. It never occupied a central place in their narrative, instead lingering on the margins of their discography. Yet songs often find new meanings beyond their original intent. My Girl resurfaced years later on the soundtrack of Coming Home, a late-1970s film about Vietnam veterans that featured several Rolling Stones tracks. In that reflective context, the band’s restrained interpretation gained a different resonance, shaded by distance and hindsight. It still stands far from the towering legacy of the Temptations’ original, but as a footnote in the Stones’ engagement with American soul, it reveals the limits of homage—and the risks of approaching a song already etched into collective memory.
Bill Wyman (1965): “We did the Temptations’ My Girl. I don’t mind admitting that it took me a while to twig exactly what I was supposed to do. The notes and musical content were straightforward enough, but it was just the timing which had me foxed for a while. It seemed as if I was playing at the wrong speed and on the wrong beat. As it happened, I was doing the right thing all along, but I had to wait until the playback to hear how well it was fitting in”
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