(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction

I can't get no satisfaction,
I can't get no satisfaction.
'Cause I try, and I try, and I try, and I try.
I can't get no, I can't get no.

When I'm drivin' in my car,
And a man comes on the radio,
And he's tellin' me more and more,
About some useless information,
Supposed to fire my imagination.
I can't get no, oh no no no.
Hey hey hey, that's what I say.

I can't get no satisfaction,
I can't get no satisfaction.
'Cause I try and I try and I try and I try.
I can't get no, I can't get no.

When I'm watchin' my TV,
And that man comes on to tell me,
How white my shirts can be.
But he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke
The same cigarettes as me.
I can't get no, oh no no no.
Hey hey hey, that's what I say.

I can't get no satisfaction,
I can't get no girl reaction.
'Cause I try and I try and I try and I try.
I can't get no, I can't get no.

When I'm ridin' round the world,
And I'm doin' this and I'm signing that,
And I'm tryin' to make some girl,
Who tells me baby better come back later next week
'Cause you see I'm on a losing streak.
I can't get no, oh no no no.
Hey hey hey, that's what I say.

I can't get no, I can't get no,
I can't get no satisfaction,
No satisfaction, no satisfaction, no satisfaction



- Released June 6, 1965

- The lyrics of the song include references to sexual intercourse, and the theme of anti-commercialism caused the song to be "perceived as an attack on the status quo, for the song was about the rampant commercialism the Stones had seen in America."

- The lyrics outline the singer's irritation with the increasing commercialism of the modern world, where the radio broadcasts "useless information" and a man on television tells him "how white my shirts can be - but he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke the same cigarettes as me."

- "And I'm tryin' to make some girl, who tells me baby better come back later next week 'cause you see I'm on a losing streak." This verse is in reference to not getting any "girl reaction" which was fairly controversial in its day, interpreted by some listeners (and radio programmers) as meaning a girl willing to have sex. Particularly shocking to some people was a reference to a girl having her period (being "on a losing streak")

- The title line, (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, is an example of a double negative resolving to a negative, a common usage in colloquial English.

- The riff came to Keith Richards in a dream one night in May 1965, in his motel room in Clearwater, Florida, the fifth stop on the Rolling Stones' third U.S. tour. He woke up, grabbed a guitar nearby and taped the music racing through his head on a handy cassette machine. Richards played the run of notes once, then fell back to sleep. "On the tape," he said later, "you can hear me drop the pick, and the rest of the tape is snoring." Reference

- Rolling Stone magazine placed "Satisfaction" in the second spot on its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All-Time.

- "Satisfaction" was the first Stones single to hit Number One in both Britain and America.

- [Mick] Jagger suggested in 1995 that [Keith] Richards unconsciously got the title hook for "Satisfaction" from a line in Berry's 1955 single "30 Days" ("I don't get no satisfaction from the judge"). "It's not any way an English person would express it," Jagger noted. "I'm not saying that he purposely nicked anything, but we played those [Chuck Berry] records a lot." Reference

- In 2006 "Satisfaction" was added to the Library of Congress National Recording Registry.

- The song's success boosted sales of the Gibson fuzzbox so much that the entire available stock sold out by the end of 1965.