Rolling Stones Start Me Up with Jimmy Fallon

por Felix P: Keith Richards

Why “Start Me Up” Still Knows How to Move a Room It’s easy to watch a short clip of The Rolling Stones performing “Start Me Up” with Jimmy Fallon and see it as nothing more than a fun late-night moment: a legendary band walks onstage, the familiar riff kicks in, and suddenly everyone is moving. But there’s something more interesting happening. The Stones aren’t trying to look young again. They don’t need to. What’s remarkable is that a song released in 1981 can still give the human body the same instruction decades later: move. Keith Richards’ guitar riff is the key. It isn’t complicated or overloaded with decoration. It simply arrives with enough confidence to pull the entire band into motion. Then Mick Jagger comes in with that unmistakable attitude, delivering the song as if he isn’t remembering the past at all—he’s still demanding the present. And Fallon almost becomes part of the experiment. He doesn’t make the song relevant. The song makes him relevant to the moment. His reaction becomes proof of what a great rock hook can do: you don’t have to understand its history to feel its effect. The riff starts, and your body already knows what to do. That’s also why the short works so well. There’s no need for a long introduction or explanation. The song has been heard in radio, commercials, movies, stadiums and countless other places for decades. The clip simply presses the button. The emotion isn’t really nostalgia. It’s immediate pleasure—the kind that makes your shoulders move before your brain has decided whether you’re going to dance. And perhaps that is the real legacy of “Start Me Up.” Some songs survive because we remember them. Others survive because they still do something to us. “Start Me Up” doesn’t feel like a museum piece from 1981. It still feels like a command. Not to restart a career. Not to relive the past. Just start moving. What guitar riff can still make you move the moment you hear it?