The Rolling Stones / Some Girls (Remastered 2011) / 1978
Beast Of Burden
tired, pleading, tender beneath the resignation
Video: The Rolling Stones on YouTube
Lyrics
I'll never be your beast of burden
My back is broad, but it's a hurting
All I want, for you to make love to me
I'll never be your beast of burden
I've walked for miles, my feet are hurting
All I want is for you to make love to me
Am I hard enough?
Am I rough enough?
Showing 8 of 45 lines -- this excerpt supports the analysis alongside it. Read the full lyric on Genius.
Lyrics via LRCLIB (community-contributed). Rights remain with the songwriters and publishers.
Credits
Written by Mick Jagger, Keith Richards
Produced by The Glimmer Twins, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards
Credits via Genius
Timed (LRC) version available
A synced lyric was found for this track and is stored with the record.
The analysis
A weary plea for tenderness dressed up as a refusal to keep serving as someone's workhorse. The narrator insists he's given enough — labor, loyalty, physical presence — and now wants simple affection in return, not more demands.
exhaustion in relationships emotional labor vs desire masculinity and self-worth codependency longing for tenderness
Who's speaking
A male narrator addresses a partner directly, alternating between weary protest and open vulnerability; he seems reliable in his fatigue but somewhat self-justifying about how much he's given.
What happens
The song opens with the narrator declaring he's done being used up, citing physical wear as evidence. He shifts into asking to simply go home and be intimate, away from whatever conflict has worn him down. A string of insecure questions about his adequacy follows, then a bridge where he offers to absorb her worst treatment, still bewildered that she doesn't see him as suitable. The song closes by repeating the refusal to be a beast of burden while clarifying what he actually wants: not obligation, but rest and reciprocity.
How it's built
Built on a repeating verse-refrain pattern rather than a strict verse/chorus divide — the central line about not being a burden-animal recurs like a mantra, punctuated by a call-and-response bridge of self-doubting questions. The 'pretty girl' interlude functions as a brief tonal break, softer and almost teasing, before the song returns to its central complaint with intensified repetition at the close.
Section by section
Opening refrain
Establishes the central complaint and the physical metaphor of overwork, immediately paired with a simple, almost childlike request for love rather than labor.
Domestic verse
Shifts from protest to a quieter domestic scene, imagining retreat into private intimacy as an antidote to the exhaustion described earlier.
Question bridge
The narrator interrogates his own worth in blunt, transactional terms, revealing anxiety about masculinity and value that complicates his earlier confidence.
'Pretty girl' interlude
A tonal detour into flattery and repetition, functioning almost as a spoken aside or vamp; it lightens the mood before the emotional stakes rise again.
Endurance bridge
The narrator offers to absorb abuse and rejection without complaint, framing devotion as tolerance for mistreatment, and voices confusion at being deemed unsuitable despite this.
Closing repetition
The refrain returns with escalating repetition of refusal, followed by a clarifying coda that reframes the desired relationship as one without obligation or caretaking, just partnership.
Craft
- extended metaphor
- The beast of burden image runs through the whole song, casting the relationship's imbalance as literal physical labor — carrying weight, walking until sore — which lets fatigue stand in for emotional depletion.
- anaphora
- Repeated openings ('I'll never,' 'Am I') build incantatory pressure, turning personal complaint into something closer to ritual insistence.
- rhetorical questioning
- The stacked self-assessing questions expose insecurity masquerading as accusation, letting the narrator's confidence crack even as he protests his adequacy.
- irony
- A song ostensibly about refusing servitude spends much of its energy begging for affection and offering to endure mistreatment, undercutting its own declared independence.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading takes the song as a portrait of a man exhausted by being treated as useful rather than loved — his refusal to be a 'beast of burden' is less about rejecting the relationship than about demanding it change register, from service to intimacy. An alternative reading hears more self-pity and manipulation in the bridge, where his offer to endure abuse reads as a bargaining chip for affection rather than a genuine act of grace, suggesting the narrator isn't as innocent of games as he claims.
Context
Recorded during the Some Girls sessions in the late 1970s, a period when the band was reasserting a leaner, more direct sound after the more sprawling mid-70s albums. I don't have reliable specific biographical detail about the song's composition beyond general knowledge that it became one of the band's more enduring ballads of that era.
Listen for
- the contrast between the weary verses and the more pleading, almost desperate questions in the bridge
- the way repetition of the central refusal builds through the song, especially in the final stretch
- the shift in tone during the 'pretty girl' interlude, which briefly lightens the emotional weight
- how the closing lines redefine what the narrator actually wants, moving from refusal to a plain statement of need
About The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones are an English rock band formed in 1962. Active for over six decades, they are one of the most popular, influential, and enduring bands of the rock era.
1962 - present / United Kingdom
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