34 Licks

They should have limited the number of "licks" to 30. Instead, the producers insult our collective intelligence by adding a bunch of filler (garbage) tracks from the later albums just to get to the number 40. I guess not doing so would be an open admission that those albums (e.g., Steel Wheels, Bridges to Babylon, etc.) really did suck. Instead of taking the very best tracks, they took the same approach that Major League Baseball takes with the All Star Game--every team gets to send one player, no matter how bad or devoid of real all stars a team may be. That's nonsense. I guess that's why they didn't use the words "greatest hits" for this compilation. What they should have done was come up with the 30 or 40 best tracks based on how far up they went in the Billboard charts, sales figures, iTunes downloads, or some other real indicator of success. Finding 40 great tracks should be easy. It's the freaking Rolling Stones we're talking about, not Hootie & the Blowfish! I gave it 4 stars only because I rounded up from 3.75.

Rolling The Stone Pass Forty

Hate to say this on a group so many admire, but I'm still a bigger Beatle's fan, and if they were around for forty years, they would have spanked these bad boys of rock butts, especially John Lennon. But... I do like the Stones too, in fact, I like almost every British band from this era. You didn't just have these guys doing the blues over there, you had The Animals, The Yardbirds, hell even The Kinks, yep they did some groovy stuff too. Anyways, this whole album has fantastic music, not all their great stuff is compiled on here, but a majority of it is here. Just look at the list from above, and play it on your 'windows player' or whatnots, pretty good huh. Like I said, all British bands from this first British invasion is pretty damn good, hell even check out 'The Hollies' or even 'Dave Clark Five', or even 'Gerry and the Pacemaker', cause if you like this band from the get-go, you should probally like these bands too.

Good career spanning collection but still missing songs

Forty Licks is the first career spanning collection from the Stones. The first disc covers their 60's material and the second disc covers some of their 70's, 80's and 90's work. I would recommend this collection if you are just starting to get into the Stones. Otherwise, the double disc Hot Rocks gives an excellent collection of their 60's, early 70's material and the Jump Back: 1971-1993 album is a superb collection of that era. Also beware, some of the songs have been edited and cut down!!! 40 licks is missing such classics as "Midnight Rambler", "Hand of Fate" and "Stray Cat Blues". None of the new songs are anything amazing but "Don't Stop" is a great rocker. Overall, 40 Licks is a decent collection but has major flaws. Buy Hot Rocks and Jump Back.