Not The Rolling Stones, Not His Solo Career: Mick Jagger's Supergroup That Time Forgot

No, SuperHeavy wasn't super heavy — that label belongs to some chaotic madness from black metal outfit Deathspell Omega. SuperHeavy was, however, a supergroup full of super big names like Mick Jagger and Damian Marley, plus a fusion of reggae, soul, rock, and electronic elements. But since you've likely never heard of the band, allow us to point you to their one and only, lost-to-time, 2011 album, "SuperHeavy." 

By the time 2011 rolled around, Mick Jagger really had nothing left to prove. To date, the Rolling Stones are one of the biggest, most recognizable names in rock history, with songs from 1965 that sound even cooler today. The Stones have sold about 85 million records, won four Grammys out of 13 nominations, landed eight No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 songs (and 58 in the top 100 overall), while Jagger himself has inspired that horrible Maroon 5 song that went terribly wrong at the 2019 Super Bowl (nothing to be proud of, just saying). No one will ever forget Jagger or the Stones, hence the "Yeah, I might as well do this," one-off album from SuperHeavy.

Okay, Jagger's decision to co-form a musical supergroup wasn't that offhand a choice. Originally a pitch from Eurythmics co-founder Dave Stewart, SuperHeavy was meant to be a mishmash of musical styles packed into one group. Jagger and Stewart recruited Bob Marley's son and five-time Grammy winner, Damian Marley, soul singer Joss Stone, and Indian composer A.R. Rahman to round out the group, which was always intended to be a one-off, experimental project.

There was no way that SuperHeavy was ever going to reach the heights of a band like the Stones, nor was it intended to. No matter all the big names attached to the project, it was a project about the music, first and foremost, not marketability. No matter that Jagger doubted that SuperHeavy would ever come to fruition, it was born out of a real love for mixing different kinds of music together. Basically, that's exactly what the whole album sounds like, flipping from classic rock ("Never Gonna Change") to reggae-pop ("Miracle Worker") to Urdu-language spiritual, "Satyameva Jayate," and more.

Unlike Stephen Stills' forgotten supergroup, Manassas, which crumbled from substance abuse and interpersonal division, SuperHeavy worked as smooth as butter. As the Hollywood Reporter wrote in 2011, the group plowed through material; within six days of getting together, they'd written 22 songs. Jagger said in an interview with YouTube Presents that even though he liked the project's top-down idea of collecting various musical experts and stirring them together, he really couldn't imagine what the music would actually sound like. In that same interview, Dave Stewart said that the band members didn't even know if they'd be making a full-on album rather than just messing around together and seeing what happens.  

SuperHeavy's album wound up being a refined version of a bunch of live jam sessions. It produced no Billboard Hot 100 singles, though the album itself reached No. 26 on the Billboard 200. It's at least worth a shot if you're curious about what happens when a musical experiment is actually allowed to take its course all the way to completion.