The 1980s File Feature
Let's Work
Let's Work: Mick Jagger's Solo Career and the Funk of 1987 Mick Jagger launched his solo career in earnest with the 1985 album She's the Boss, a project that…
01 The Story
Let's Work: Mick Jagger's Solo Career and the Funk of 1987
Mick Jagger launched his solo career in earnest with the 1985 album She's the Boss, a project that demonstrated both his ambitions beyond the Rolling Stones and the commercial viability of his individual identity as a performer. The second solo album, Primitive Cool, released on Columbia Records in September 1987, represented a more developed and sonically adventurous statement, one shaped by collaborations with producers and musicians drawn from outside the Rolling Stones' typical creative circle.
Primitive Cool was produced by Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics, whose production sensibility drew on a wide range of influences from British post-punk to American funk and R&B. Stewart's involvement brought a particular edge to the album's sound that suited Jagger's desire to operate outside the Stones' established aesthetic without simply making a Rolling Stones album without the other Stones. The album featured contributions from a range of session musicians and featured artists, creating a sonic environment that was clearly a product of its mid-1980s moment while reaching for something more sustained than pure trend-chasing.
"Let's Work" was one of the singles released from Primitive Cool and the track that received the most significant commercial attention in the United States. The song entered the Billboard Hot 100 on September 12, 1987, debuting at position 75. The climb was consistent if not spectacular: to 67 on September 19, to 56 on September 26, to 46 on October 3, to 44 on October 10, before reaching its peak position of 39 on October 24, 1987. The song remained on the chart for nine weeks, a respectable run that placed it comfortably within the mainstream pop consciousness of autumn 1987.
The track drew heavily on funk and rhythm and blues influences, reflecting both Jagger's longstanding engagement with Black American musical traditions (a cornerstone of the Rolling Stones' entire career) and the broader late-1980s pop moment's enthusiasm for funk-inflected production. The track's rhythmic drive and horn arrangements created a sound that was simultaneously contemporary and historically grounded, placing Jagger within the lineage of white rock artists who had built careers on a deep engagement with Black musical forms.
Dave Stewart's production on the track was energetic and confident, suited to Jagger's performative strengths as a vocalist and stage personality. Jagger's voice, which had never been a technically refined instrument in the classical sense, functioned on "Let's Work" as a vehicle for physical energy and personality rather than melodic precision, which was entirely appropriate to the funk context the production established.
MTV rotation of the accompanying music video, which featured Jagger's characteristically theatrical performance style, helped establish the song's commercial presence with a visual audience that was central to pop success in 1987. Jagger's engagement with the visual dimensions of pop promotion had been evident since the Rolling Stones' early adoption of the promotional film format, and his solo video work extended this engagement with considerable professional polish.
The period of Jagger's solo work in the mid-to-late 1980s coincided with what was, by the standards of his career, an extended Stones hiatus. Keith Richards had pursued his own solo work during this period, and the tensions within the group were publicly documented. The solo albums thus carried a weight that extended beyond their intrinsic musical content, functioning as statements about Jagger's individual identity and commercial viability separate from the institution of the Rolling Stones.
"Let's Work" reached number 39 on the Hot 100, a solid performance that confirmed Jagger's continued ability to generate mainstream chart interest as a solo act. The nine-week chart run reflected sustained radio support rather than a brief promotional spike, suggesting genuine listener engagement with the track. Within the context of Jagger's broader solo output and the Stones' extended catalog, "Let's Work" represents a confident moment in his mid-career navigation of the post-Stones commercial landscape, demonstrating that his individual identity remained commercially potent while the group awaited its eventual return to activity.
02 Song Meaning
Energy, Labor, and the Performative Self in "Let's Work"
"Let's Work" belongs to a mode of pop song that uses the language of physical labor and exertion as a metaphor for romantic or creative engagement, a tradition with deep roots in American popular music extending back through the blues and into the work songs that preceded it. The injunction to "work" in a pop context carries layered meanings that operate simultaneously across romantic, professional, and broadly aspirational registers.
For Mick Jagger specifically, the work metaphor carries biographical resonance. His public persona had been built over more than two decades on a quality of relentless energy, the sense that performance itself was a form of physical labor undertaken with total commitment and no reserve held back. The song's call to work thus functions partly as a self-portrait, asserting the values that had defined Jagger's artistic identity throughout his career.
The funk production context in which "Let's Work" operates gives the work metaphor additional weight. Funk as a genre has always maintained close connections to the tradition of work songs and to the Black American experience of physical labor as both a necessity and a site of creative expression. James Brown, whose influence on both funk as a genre and on Jagger as a performer was profound, made the relationship between physical work and musical performance central to his artistic identity in ways that resonated throughout his career and throughout the careers of those he influenced.
Dave Stewart's production for the track establishes a sonic environment of collective energy and shared purpose, with the horn arrangements and rhythm section creating a sense of communal effort that suits the lyric's plural invitation. "Let's work" is addressed to someone else, or to a collective of others, making the work an activity undertaken together rather than individually. This communal dimension aligns with funk's traditional emphasis on collective groove as the genre's defining feature and highest value.
Jagger's vocal performance on the track demonstrates the qualities that had made him one of rock's most compelling frontmen for more than two decades: the physicality of the delivery, the rhythmic precision, and the quality of infectious energy that made listeners feel implicated in the song's call to action. These qualities are less about technical vocal accomplishment than about a kind of performative conviction that communicates itself directly to audiences regardless of the specific content of what is being communicated.
The song's appearance on Primitive Cool, an album whose title invokes a specific kind of authenticity rooted in directness and physical immediacy rather than intellectual sophistication, places "Let's Work" within a deliberate aesthetic framework. The primitive in the album title is not an insult but a value claim, asserting that the most potent forms of musical expression derive their power from elemental qualities rather than from refinement or complexity. "Let's Work" embodies this aesthetic position in its relentless rhythmic drive and its resistance to musical elaboration that might soften the track's core energy. The result is a recording that succeeds on its own terms, delivering the concentrated physical excitement that its funk context promises and that Jagger's career-long engagement with Black American musical traditions had prepared him to achieve.
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