Under My Thumb

To be "under one's thumb" means to be under that person's control. In this song, Mick Jagger has turned the tables on a girl who used to push him around, so now she's under his thumb and the "sweetest pet in the world." Some feminist groups the song rather offensive, especially the line, "The way she talks when she's spoken to down to me." In a 1984 interview, Jagger explained: "The whole idea was that I was under HER, she was kicking ME around. So the whole idea is absurd, all I did was turn the tables around. So women took that to be against femininity where in reality it was trying to 'get back' against being a repressed male."

The unusual percussion on this track is Brian Jones playing the marimbas. Their original lead guitarist, Jones played a variety of instruments to create some innovative sounds for the Stones, who weren't as guitar focused in their early years. Nick Reynolds, who co-produced the documentary Rolling Stone: Life and Death of Brian Jones, considers it some of Jones' best work. "He makes the arrangement that turns this song into a timeless classic," Reynolds told Songfacts.

Brian Jones went into decline in the years after this song was released and was fired from the band in 1969, less than a month before he was found dead in his swimming pool. Keith Richards said in 1994: "Brian was still fantastic making records, because he was so versatile. I mean, he'd have marimbas - which is why you have marimbas on 'Under My Thumb' - or dulcimer, sitar. He kind of lost interest in guitar, in a way. But at the same time he added all of that other color, those other instruments and other ideas. He was an incredibly inventive musician."