(Credits: Far Out / Warner Bros. Records)
Mon 13 April 2026 8:32, UK
It’s impossible for any artist to have the same enthusiasm for songs they’ve sung hundreds of times. It’s important to keep everything fresh and to know all of the inflexions to put on every syllable, but does anyone think that a band like Radiohead will be over the moon if they have to play ‘Creep’ one more time?
While Rod Stewart does have a few songs that have never got old for him, he admitted that one specific pop tune has worn out its welcome in his live set through the years.
But the magic of Stewart’s career is that he has been able to do many different things throughout his solo work. Although he started out with the hard rock and blues crowd that everyone else had in the late 1960s, hearing him trade that in for something more authentic on Every Picture Tells a Story showed a different side of his voice.
Even though he could belt out ‘Stay With Me’ without a care in the world, hearing him slow things down on ‘Maggie May’ was what helped make him a superstar in his own right. If that kind of switch worked, then Stewart owed it to himself to sample whatever tracks he had to work with to see what else fit his style.
That kind of gamble was always part of Stewart’s appeal. He wasn’t the kind of artist to sit in one lane and refine it to perfection. If something felt like it had a pulse, he was going to give it a go and see if his voice could wrap itself around it in some convincing way.
Sometimes that instinct led to gold, and other times it sent him down roads that didn’t quite suit the rough-and-ready charm he built his name on. But that was the trade-off. When you’re chasing whatever feels exciting in the moment, you’re bound to end up with a few songs that stick around longer than you might like.
(Credits: Far Out / W. Punt / Dutch National Archives)
And for a little while, it managed to briefly work. Most of Stewart’s contemporaries usually had either moved onto something new or had gone away by the time MTV kicked in, but the fact that he was still seeing success off of ‘Young Turks’ and ‘Forever Young’ is more of a testament to how good those wongs were back in the day.
At the same time, he will always have to deal with the backlash of ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy’ for the rest of his days. Even though the song is already one of the dumber attempts a rock star made at jumping on the disco bandwagon, hearing him try to wrap his raspy voice around glittering synths and the four-on-the-floor beat of disco is the musical equivalent of trying to put battery acid on top of a salad.
Despite looking at most of his work with some degree of pride, Stewart admitted that there was a time when he felt like retiring the song because of how sick he was of playing it, telling The Guardian, “There was a time I got tired of singing ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?’ because it was so critically put-down, but it made people happy, so what’s wrong with that? It still puts a smile on people’s faces when I sing it.”
It might still bring smiles to every Rod Stewart show, but it’s hard to imagine the tune working that well in a live setting. Whereas a song like ‘Good Times’ by Chic thrives off of that relentless rhythm and the crowd getting engaged with the backbeat, the groove on the recording feels far too rigid compared to the smoother textures heard on true disco classics.
Then again, it’s hard to argue when the crowds seem to love it. It may be one of the stiffer attempts that any rock star has ever made at shaking their groove thing, but what’s the point in trying to harsh someone’s buzz when they are having a good time?
