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Mick Jagger: vocals Keith Richards: rhythm guitar, backing vocals Ron Wood: rhythm guitar, lead guitar, bass, pedal steel guitar, percusskion, backing vocals Charlie Watts: drums Guest musicians: Simon Kirke, Hassan and probably Mick Jagger (percussion)
New York in the late ’70s wasn’t just a city—it was a mood, a contradiction, a living pulse of chaos and creativity. Shattered captures that energy in a way few songs ever have, blending grit with glamour and turning urban decay into something strangely magnetic. It’s not just about a place; it’s about a feeling.
What makes the track so compelling is how it embraces disorder. Half-sung, half-spoken, the vocals feel spontaneous, almost like overheard thoughts spilling into rhythm. The loose groove mirrors the unpredictability of the streets it describes, creating a sound that feels alive, restless, and completely unpolished.
More than just an album closer, Shattered stands as a snapshot of a moment when music, culture, and city life collided. It’s raw, ironic, and oddly addictive—pulling you into its world one fragmented line at a time.
More about Shattered by The Rolling Stones
*By Marcelo Sonaglioni
Urban poetry in fragments
“In Shattered“, explains Mick Jagger to Jonathan Cott, “Keith and Woody put a riff down, and all we had was the word shattered.” From that single fragment, Jagger built something restless and alive, shaping the lyrics partly in the back of a New York cab into a half-spoken stream of impressions. Closing Some Girls, the track becomes a jagged postcard from a city on edge—its energy seductive, its decay unavoidable. Inspired in part by the 1977 blackout and its aftermath, Shattered captures a New York where love, hope, greed, and survival collide in the streets, creating a vivid, contradictory portrait that feels both fascinated and repelled by the same chaotic pulse.
A city of contradictions
Long before the groove fully settles in Shattered positions itself as both commentary and caricature of New York City in the late 1970s. The band had always maintained a complicated relationship with the United States, and here that tension sharpens into something more observational than celebratory. The city emerges as a place of extremes—where ambition thrives alongside decay, and glamour coexists with crime, drugs, and poverty.
Jagger’s delivery amplifies this duality. At times exaggerated, almost theatrical, his voice seems to mirror the very chaos he’s describing, blurring the line between satire and admiration. There’s a sense that he’s not just describing New York, but performing it—filtering its energy through a distinctly outsider lens. References like “Schmatta… I can’t give it away on Seventh Avenue” nod to Manhattan’s fashion district, using Yiddish slang to underline a world where style and deterioration coexist uneasily.
This vision also aligns with the broader cultural mood of 1978, when New York was often imagined as a near lawless urban landscape. In that sense, Shattered doesn’t just document the city—it mythologizes it, turning its grit into something strangely magnetic.
Sound, structure and experimentation
Musically the track is deceptively loose. Built around a riff by Keith Richards, treated with a subtle MXR phasing effect, Shattered moves with a kind of controlled disorder. Richards keeps his guitar work minimal—alternating tonic and dominant chords—allowing the rhythm and texture to carry the track forward. With Bill Wyman absent, Ronnie Wood steps into multiple roles, handling bass duties while also contributing rhythm guitar, the main solo, and even touches of pedal steel. Some accounts suggest he may also have added bass drum accents alongside Charlie Watts, whose steady, linear groove anchors the entire piece with understated precision.
Additional percussion in the bridge—its contributors still debated, with names like Simon Kirke and even (Keith Richards’ manager) Jane Rose occasionally mentioned—adds another layer of unpredictability. These elements push the song through shifting sonic spaces, giving it a fragmented, almost collage-like feel. The result is a track that feels both raw and deliberate, echoing the emerging punk aesthetic while still rooted in the Stones’ rhythmic instincts.
Mick Jagger(1978): “In Shattered Keith and Woody put a riff down, and all we had was the word shattered. So I just made the rest up and thought it would sound better if it were half-talked.”
Keith Richards (1982): “We aren’t using a pull-string or a lot of slide right now, but Ron plays pedal steel, a bit on Shattered and Far Away Eyes. Country music’s a part of the way we do that kind of thing, and it comes through even if it’s done with straight guitars sort of pulling up against each other.”
Between punk, disco and something new
Shattered stands at a crossroads of genres. While clearly influenced by the raw energy of punk, it also incorporates a danceable looseness that hints at disco, making it one of the most stylistically hybrid moments on Some Girls. This fusion gives the song a restless momentum, as if it refuses to settle into a single identity—much like the city it portrays.
There’s even an unexpected vocal innovation at play. Jagger employs Sprechgesang, a half-sung, half-spoken technique pioneered by Arnold Schoenberg in Pierrot Lunaire. By slipping between speech and melody, he anticipates elements of rap, using rhythm and phrasing as much as pitch to drive the performance.
This stylistic blend has led some to compare the track to the energy of the New York Dolls, as if the Stones were channeling a Lower East Side aesthetic through their own lens. The groove may feel unstructured, but it’s precisely that looseness that gives Shattered its identity—unpolished, kinetic, and unmistakably of its time.
Mick Jagger (1978): “Maybe it’s just my bad enunciation (laughs) running away with me. And it’s also because I like the sound of words, the way the noises come out. In Shattered, where you have sha-dooby, I wanted that to be heard, because it’s as much a part of the song as the words. Van Morrison and Dylan do that kind of thing. Everyone does it, actually.”
Context, release and legacy
Recorded between October and December 1977, the song emerged during a tense period for the band. Keith Richards was facing serious drug charges following a Toronto arrest, with the possibility of a life sentence looming. In that uncertain atmosphere, Jagger assumed greater creative control over Some Girls, a shift that can be felt in the sharp, observational tone of tracks like Shattered.
Released as a single in the United States with Everything Is Turning to Gold as its B-side—a track co-written with Ronnie Wood and inspired by the birth of his son—the song reached number 31 in February 1979. Despite its modest chart performance, it has endured as one of the album’s defining moments.
A memorable, if chaotic, live performance on Saturday Night Live further cemented its reputation, capturing the band in a raw, unpredictable state. Over time Shattered has come to be seen as more than just an album closer—it’s a snapshot of a band adapting, absorbing new influences, and reflecting a city that, like the song itself, thrives on tension and contradiction.
Mick Jagger (2011): “And also that element of early rap was in Shattered… So it’s like a kind of punk beat with this guitar riff that Keith does, and me, it’s sort of… what I do is a sort of semi-rap thing. You know it’s half talking… I was obviously very influenced by early rap”
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