Soul Survivor

Exile on Main St.
Side Four, Track Three
"Soul Survivor" – 3:49



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... and Exile ends with a whimper instead of a bang. On an album where the Stones took all kinds of chances, experimented with abandon in ways we'd never see again, "Soul Survivor" clocks in as the most generic track the band had recorded until this point. Not a bad track, but it sounds exactly like something that could pop up on Steel Wheels or an ipod advertisement 30 years later.

Shine a Light

Exile on Main St.
Side Four, Track Three
"Shine a Light" – 4:14



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I've always heard "Shine a Light" as a fairly typical example of a soul-inflected ballad, no more musically interesting than, say, "Let It Be" or "Take It to the Limit". I never really understood the amount of attention the song attracted—compared to most of the tracks on Exile or any of the ballads on Sticky Fingers, "Shine a Light" is unremarkable.

There is a lot of confusion over who played what on this track. I was going to do some research to clear that up, but it's just not worth it for this vanilla track. I can say that Billy Preston is the man on the B3 (moonlighting from his gig at the time over at Abbey Road Studios), and who was perhaps asked to use his extensive gospel background to help arrange the song.