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List Price: $17.98 | | Label: Abkco
Salesrank: 74050
Released: October 25, 1990 |
| Our Price: $37.98 |
| Used Price: $5.88 |
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| Media: Audio CD |
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December's Children (And Everybody's) Track Listing:
1. She Said Yeah
2. Talkin' About You
3. You Better Move On
4. Look What You've Done
5. Singer Not the Song
6. Route 66
7. Get Off of My Cloud
8. I'm Free
9. As Tears Go By
10. Gotta Get Away
11. Blue Turns to Grey
12. I'm Moving On
Editorial Review:
Before this 1965 blues-rock masterpiece, the Stones were the best of the many British bands living out their Muddy Waters dress-up fantasies. They continue giving new life to old songs, such as Arthur Alexander's soul tearjerker "You Better Move On" and the Nat King Cole standard "Route 66," but there are several exciting new developments. Keith Richards and Mick Jagger discover their songwriting talents, coming up with the enduring "Get Off My Cloud" and "As Tears Go By" as well as the underappreciated "I'm Free." And drummer Charlie Watts focuses the swing-jazz fills that have defined the Stones as much as the writing, voices, and guitars. --Steve Knopper
Description of December's Children (And Everybody's):
Dig how even a tossed-together cash-in by the Stones' U.S. label--the group's third American album of 1965--ends up smoking like all but their very best. They invent thrash with the opener, "She Said Yeah" (a Specialty Records obscurity penned, under a pseudonym, by Sonny Bono!) before laying down a leering "Talkin' 'Bout You," a frenetic "I'm Movin' On" and their most consistent, varied list of originals yet. Dig, too, how even "As Tears Go By" sounds like a sneer in the midst of "Get Off of My Cloud," "Gotta Get Away," "I'm Free" and the dourly off-key "Blue Turns to Grey." --Rickey Wright
December's Children (And Everybody's) Reviews:
1965 The Rolling Stones record on CD. 
2009-10-27 - Not really the best Stones record, compared to many other records that followed this one. Perhaps, a bit too quirky, overall. The Stones are probably at their best, when they play pure Rock and Roll music.
One of the best early Stones albums 
2009-01-26 - This album earmarks the end of the beginning of the band. It's a band in transition from a cover band (of the R&B, RR, and Blues classics) to a band creating its own sound and songs. The band thanks its manager at the time for pushing them upward.
As others noted, Keith and Brian weave together well on this album. Jagger's voice gains volume as his lyrics reveal his passion. As a young boy I listened to this one over and over, and still listen to it today. The lyrics reflect Jagger's reading (at the time Marianne Faithful had him reading poetry), and a sophistication he lost over the years. The bass and drums, the machine of the band, are solid. Nobody rocks as steady as Charlie. Ian's piano licks churning the sound on. I prefer Ian's sound to the clinking sound their keyboard player produces these days. In many ways, because of Brian, because of Jagger's hard work to develop better lyrics, I prefer the band at this stage to the one we hear today.
Disappointing followup to Out of Our Heads 
2007-04-02 - Squeezed between Out of Our Heads and Aftermath, easily their two best early albums (by "early", I mean "Pre-Beggars Banquet") is December's Children, one of their weaker early albums, along with 12x5 and Satanic Majesties. There's not really much bite here. Yeah, the proto-punk Get off My Cloud is here, heavy on drums, guitars and attitude and one of their best ever. As Tears Go By is their entry into the 1965 Orchestrated Ballad Sweepstakes, and I'd give it the winner - like Yesterday, but more mature and sincere, and with a better string arrangement. Then there's some random lousiness, and some random badness. I REALLY don't like I'm Free. Yeah, it's all peppy and happy and exuberant. The Stones don't DO peppy and happy and exuberant. The Stones do sullen, moody and dark, or at LEAST completely perverse. Not only that, but they run off with Eight Days a Week's chorus hook. I mean, I don't blame them for wanting to rip off the Beatles, but come on. And of course there's that stupid phone commercial.
Same goes for The Singer Not the Song. Ooh, metaphor in the chorus! Now we're really smart! Sorry, but no. And it's got that stupid Merseybeat sound that nobody but The Beatles could make listenable. Okay, no more Beatles comparisons.
You'd Better Move On... eurgh. It's like they were sitting around bored one day, and somebody yelled, "Hey! Let's do another really bad R&B cover that nobody's gonna listen to more than once! You know, we've ruined Walkin' the Dog, Pain in My Heart and Under the Boardwalk, so let's ruin You Better Move On!". And everyone else said, "Cool!" And that was that.
Chuck Berry should sue the guys for their cover of his Talkin' About You, it's so bad. Then again, that wasn't a great song in the first place, so maybe a lawsuit would be a waste. Speaking of wastes, how about that live Route 66? The Stones' take on Hit Makers was a fresh take on a song we've all heard too much of. But they almost (but don't quite) lose their kudos for that version here. If I wanted to hear teenagers scream their heads off while a band ran though a watered-down performance, I'd listen to... wait, never mind. I had promised to stop comparisons to that OTHER group of deserved British Invasion legends. Some of the material is likeable enough (She Said Yeah, Look What You've Done, I'm Moving On), but isn't at all great.
Okay, the Stones were a year away from the Artistic Big Time, which they hit on Aftermath, influenced on that hugely successful pop band from the '60's we all know and love as... take a guess. ("Bad Company?" "Sit down, chump!"), and that maverick, groundbreaking folk-rocker whose name you must know. ("Neil Diamond?" "Wrong-o"), while at the same time influencing both acts tremendously. They weren't there yet, though.
Stupendously Fantastic
2006-06-13 - This is an absolute stunner of a record. The bad boys of Rock and Roll really go to town with Chuck Berry's "Talkin' About You," and Bobby Troup's "Route 66." The latter being one of the two live songs on the record. The timeless "As Tears Go By," written by Mick and Keith along with group manage Andrew Oldham," has got to be one of the signature songs of a generation. According to my folks, it was the Boomer's big make out song. Hey, I've made out to it too, the song really is timeless. The other Mick and Keith songs that I really like are "Blue Turns to Grey" and "Get off My Cloud." Brian's slide guitar on the live version of "I'm Moving On" is stupendous, in fact the whole record is stupendously fantastic.
A hodge-podge, not really an album (2.5 stars)
2005-06-02 - After the success of OUT OF OUR HEADS, the Stones (really Abkco) take a step backwards with NOVEMBER'S CHILDREN, which amounts to a cynical packaging of leftover songs and current singles.
Again, it's half-cover versions and half Jagger/Richard originals in a package that the Stones themselves dismissed. (The UK version of this album was named OUT OF OUR HEADS -- to make things more confusing.) The saving grace is the inclusion of the then-current single, Get Off My Cloud/As Tears Go By.
Otherwise, there's little else to this album. Covers such as She Said Yeah are good, but nothing fantastic, while other Stones originals like Blue Turns To Grey sound like album filler.
Wouldn't it have been more sensible to combine the US & UK versions of OUT OF OUR HEADS?
