YOU CAN’T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT
Some songs rise out of an era like smoke from a fire — drifting, mysterious, half-understood, yet strangely unforgettable. You Can’t Always Get What You Want is one of those songs. Mick Jagger himself admitted that much of its imagery is just that: imagery. Common among 60s rockers, and common still today, the words move from scene to scene without much explanation, as though they were carried along by the currents of whatever poet Dylan happened to be at the moment. Mr. Jimmy — we at least know who he was. Jimmy Miller, the Stones’ producer, immortalized in a passing line. But the rest? Anyone’s guess. And honestly, it doesn’t really matter. The verses wander, but the chorus — the chorus lands.
Because the chorus speaks a truth the human heart has bumped into since Eden: “You can’t always get what you want.” No matter how loudly desire shouts, no matter how fiercely we grasp, life refuses to bend to our wishes. The 60s rockers knew it, even if they sang it with a shrug more than a sigh. We know it, too. Wealth, pleasure, power, applause — these are the wants that glitter and fade, promising the world and delivering only more craving. You live long enough, you learn the rhythm: wanting, reaching, losing — wanting again. And somewhere in the background, that gospel-choir chorus keeps echoing: you can’t always get what you want.
But here is where the deeper truth breaks through — the part they stumbled into without even knowing it. “But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.” There is something profoundly biblical in that. Not in the wandering verses or the poetic haze, but in that stubborn, shining line. Our wants blind us; our needs save us. And the God who knows the difference refuses to hand us over to our own desires. Instead, He guides, corrects, withholds, redirects — and then, often quietly, gives us precisely what our souls required. Not what we would have chosen, not what we demanded, but what would make us whole.
It’s a funny thing to find a sermon buried inside a Stones song, but truth has a way of leaking into unexpected places. The chorus sounds like the echo of James’ reminder that our desires war within us; it sounds like Paul teaching that God supplies all our needs “according to His riches in glory.” It sounds like a world-weary songwriter brushing up against the wisdom of heaven without even knowing he touched it. And maybe that’s why the song endures — because beneath the wandering poetry is a chorus that rings with reality.
So here’s the lesson, wrapped in guitars and a gospel choir: don’t despair when life doesn’t hand you what you want. Keep walking, keep seeking, keep trusting — because the God who loves you is far more committed to giving you what you need. And when you finally receive it, you will know it — not with the thrill of desire, but with the quiet peace of a soul that has been given exactly what it was made for.
BDD
