Can we stop calling every Rolling Stones album their best since Some Girls?

It’s a dereliction of critical duty to overpraise art, says Michael Hann. Given that ‘Some Girls’ from 1978 wasn’t a patch on those imperial-era late Sixties and early Seventies Stones albums, laying on the hyperbole for ‘Hackney Diamonds’ is a bit like saying that the Chicken Cottage burger and chips you had last night was the best dinner you’d had since your Big Mac Meal

The Rolling Stones return on 20 October with their 24th studio album (Mark Seliger)

The minute The Rolling Stones announced their new album, Hackney Diamonds, one knew what would come next: someone, somewhere would pronounce it “their best album since Some Girls”. And, lo, it came to pass: The Times, which was granted an early preview prior to all other publications, duly did so. The same newspaper also called the last Stones album, 2016’s Blue and Lonesome, “the best Stones album since Some Girls”.

Every album the Stones have released in the past 40 years has been described as their best since Some Girls (with the solitary exception of 1994’s Voodoo Lounge; though it’s likely that the one that did just evaded my Google search). Dirty Work (1986) received the accolade from Robert Christgau, the self-styled “dean of American rock criticism” as well as The New York Times; A Bigger Bang was hailed as such by Variety and the Village Voice. Jann Wenner, the professional rock sycophant who ran Rolling Stone for many years, went so far as to say Mick Jagger’s distinctly iffy 2001 solo album Goddess in the Doorway “surpasses all his solo work and any Rolling Stones album since Some Girls”.

Clearly, they can’t all have been the best Stones album since Some Girls, otherwise the Stones would have been on a continuing upward trajectory since 1983, which sadly but evidently just isn’t the case. The “best since” phenomenon isn’t unique to the Stones: for many years, every David Bowie album was applauded as his best since Scary Monsters (1980); Neil Young has had years of releasing his best record since Rust Never Sleeps (1979); with Bob Dylan, it’s often his best since 1975’s Blood on the Tracks.