The Rolling Stones: Wild Horses Meaning

Song Released: 1971

Wild Horses Lyrics

Childhood living is easy to do
The things you wanted I bought them for you
Graceless lady you know who I am
You know I can’t let you slide through my hands

Wild horses couldn’t drag me away
Wild, wild horses, couldn’t drag me away

I...

1. anonymous

   • 1
   • 2
   • 3
   • 4
   • 5

   click a star to vote

   Dec 7th 2011 !⃝

   Like any good song, the meaning seems open. Though possibly written during a specific moment in time, the song writers knew that time would go on and that the "moment" would not last. It is full of symbolism like any good lyrical tune should be. Poetry at its best. Listen, study it, and enjoy it for the good tune that it is. Relationships are what they are, something going on between people. Trying to put feelings into words is one of the most difficult things in life.
2. anonymous

   • 1
   • 2
   • 3
   • 4
   • 5

   click a star to vote

   Sep 4th 2011 !⃝

   Okay you know what, just to clarify. Keith didn't steal that little junkie Anita from anyone. Things were falling apart between Brian and Anita, to the point where one of them ended up with black eyes, broken body parts, and blood. In the backseat of the car ANITA ended up giving Keith a blowjob. It was HER that made the first move. Keith did absolutely nothing to have Anita make her move. (Besides being downright irresistible. ;D) Anyways. Anita was quite the loose canon. She was better away from Brian than with him, (and the same with Keith.) Keith just happened to be the one she ended up with, which isn't surprising at all.
   
   And another reason why Keith wouldn't be the one to steal Anita away from Brian? WHY IN THE DAY AND AGE THAT IS CHARLIE WOULD HE DO SOMETHING TO MAKE BRIAN HATE HIM EVEN MORE??? HMMM? If you can answer that, then I'll kindly say, you've won.
   
   And yet another reason. Keith was very insecure, almost shy when it came to women. He wasn't usually the one to make the first move. If they showed they were interested, he'd go for it. But he would never make the first move.
   
   So. I was just pointing that out to all you people that make assumptions. -_-
3. anonymous

   • 1
   • 2
   • 3
   • 4
   • 5

   click a star to vote

   May 24th 2011 !⃝

   I think the song is universal, and has lots of interpretation, which vary from a person to another.
   The lyrics that Mick wrote weren't specifically for Marianne, the song wasn't written for her...
   Each person can interpret the song differently, I don't think there's a specific message... I mean, there was obviously for Mick and Keith, but now Wild Horses has become universal, which means every person cand find his/her own meaning to the song, and that's because it has a meaning that goes beyond the situation in which it was written. This is often the case with masterpieces, books, poems, paintings, and songs.
   The song is about pain, and suffering, and love, but that's the only 3 themes that are recurring in all the different interpretations.
   Voilà !
4. anonymous

   • 1
   • 2
   • 3
   • 4
   • 5

   click a star to vote

   May 21st 2011 !⃝

   I think that song is about me and my father. I love him to death, but he was so tough to me when i were a little girl that i could only felt like shit. When i grew up i found the way to make him suffer and he told me that he knew how much damage he has been doing to me. However, i didn't forgive him during 7 years. I did many things to hurt him although these things were hurting me too. All the time we lost we could never have it back and there are resentment yet. And over all that shit l he loves me and cares for me. Now i have a son and i know that nor parent is perfect. My son is the only man that have heard that I love him. Is about people who punishh themselves to punish somebody else.
5. anonymous

   • 1
   • 2
   • 3
   • 4
   • 5

   click a star to vote

   Apr 22nd 2011 !⃝

   This song is about a relationship; the one singing talks about what the relationship used to be, - less mature, (ref. to childhood) (ref. to buying the other person whatever they wanted),(giving the other whatever they wanted in the relationship, perhaps giving freely)...there was love at that level, then the one singing (male) caused the other pain, (female) which seemed to be unforgiven, somehow the hurt caused the (female) one sung to or about, to not be able to forgive,(or perhaps more exact would be that it caused the one sung to to stop the relationship from continuing, even thought they still loved the one singing) I think this fits, not that the one sung to wouldn't forgive, but they were for some reason unable to forgive, the relationship suffered because of it, the one singing is saying their love expressed to the sing-ee is unending and cannot die, and nothing would ever squelch what is in their heart for the other person, however, the one sung to, perhaps through hurt and self-protection was so scarred by the pain of what they experienced in the earlier relationship that they could not grow through it to arrive on the other side, able to love again, they instead did something destructive motivated by their need for protection, and caused the effect of the relationship not continuing, which seemed less hurtful at the time, and seemed less destructive than allowing the real love relationship to continue. Instead what they caused was complete destruction of the relationship, although the love, the singer sings, would continue forever.

   This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
6. anonymous

   • 1
   • 2
   • 3
   • 4
   • 5

   click a star to vote

   Mar 8th 2011 !⃝

   OK, now that you have all speculated on this, the truth is, Keith Richards wrote this song for Gram Parsons to record. It was first recorded by the Flying Burrito Brothers, Gram's band at the time. Kieth gave it to Gram as a thank you for Gram's helping the Stones create their honky tonk sound. The Stones recorded it after the Flying Burrito Brothers recorded it.
   
   A further aside, it was Keith Richards that introduced Gram to the drugs that would eventually kill him.
7. anonymous

   • 1
   • 2
   • 3
   • 4
   • 5

   click a star to vote

   Sep 23rd 2010 !⃝

   Two points after reading some of the interpretations above. The original as sung by Mick Jagger has lines:
   
   "Graceless lady, you know HOW I am" and
   
   "Lets do some living after LOVE dies".
   
   Covers of this song (e.g., Susan Boyle) have often changed these lines and the meaning obviously can be quite different.
8. anonymous

   • 1
   • 2
   • 3
   • 4
   • 5

   click a star to vote

   Aug 11th 2010 !⃝

   It's about Keith Richard's heroin addiction.
9. greta

   • 1
   • 2
   • 3
   • 4
   • 5

   click a star to vote

   Aug 4th 2010 !⃝

   Also, she not only became jaded, but seemed to stop caring about the relationship and how it functioned.
10. anonymous

    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

    click a star to vote

    Jun 16th 2010 !⃝

    More: sung by Susan Boyle, it reverberates even more. Graceless lady becomes Susan, admitting her lack of external grace (though her voice transforms her). The line about living...after we die... not much time...are hard, poignant remarks...Susan, admitting she has put off too long her bid for love and romance...and expresses for her the astonishment she feels that her feelings of love and romance are just as strong near the age of fifty as they were when she was ridiculously young, and better poised for receiving those gifts of love and romance that everyone else, by now, seems to have found. Truly, if fairy tales came true, a Piers Morgan, sitting as a judge with his eyes misting with tears, would eventually be sweeping her into his kind arms. But the cruel world tells her that he is someone else's; she is only a graceless lady forever; and yet, her love of this very dream might keep her magic glowing, in the hope that someday her constancy will persuade him he might love her---for she has loved him despite incredible odds against her.
11. anonymous

    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

    click a star to vote

    Jun 16th 2010 !⃝

    Its charm is its humbleness (can a Rolling Stone be humble? It is proven here, yes). Its magic is it written about someone sick and frail. Its acknowledgement is that all the glitter of the external world cannot compare to the lit candle of the interior world, the deep dream, of love. It begs the suffering woman to live forever, to live forever with him, or if that is not possible, within him, wherever he goes.
12. Graceless.Lady

    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

    click a star to vote

    Feb 27th 2010 !⃝

    I should have prefaced my earlier submission by saying that, like all good art, "Wild Horses" has meaning beyond the biographical. It may have been spawned as Jagger sat at Marianne's bedside, but it is far more than mere documentation of that moment. It is a testament to its emotional power and ambiguity that the song speaks different things to different people.
13. Graceless.Lady

    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

    click a star to vote

    Feb 27th 2010 !⃝

    This song addresses the "graceless lady" with whom the speaker has had an inappropriate relationship, creating "a sin and a lie." The lady feels guilty, suffering "a dull, aching pain" and at times punishes her lover for her own betrayal. It conveys the emotional pain caused by an (adulterous, probably) affair, one that the speaker can't be dragged away from, despite all the tears that "must be cried."
14. suicideblonde

    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

    click a star to vote

    Feb 25th 2010 !⃝

    This song was written by Mick Jagger as he sat at Marianne Faithfull's bedside when she was in the hospital for a pretty serious overdose.
    This song is about her and his feelings for her.
    "Graceless lady,you know who I am.You know I can't let you slide thru my hands."
15. suicideblonde

    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

    click a star to vote

    Feb 25th 2010 !⃝

    This song was written by Mick Jagger as he sat at Marianne Faithfull's bedside while she was in the hospital for a pretty serious overdose.

Latest Articles

• 
  A new era for Millennial favorite, Linkin Park
• 
  Anime to watch for the soundtracks… and other reasons you’re undateable
• 
  Dolly, we need you
• 
  The Stranger Things Effect: How new media is drawing Gen Z and Alpha's attention to aging media
• 
  The most underrated soundtrack of the early 2000s
• 
  Buy the Soundtrack, Skip the Movie: Brainscan (1994)