Ooh La La

The Faces were the greatest rock band of the early 1970s that no one quite treated as such — Rod Stewart's simultaneous solo success made them feel like a side project, and their reputation for chaos overshadowed how genuinely great they were. Ooh La La (1973) was their last album.

Ooh La La — sung not by Stewart but by Ronnie Lane — is one of the most quietly devastating songs in classic rock: a grandfather's advice to a grandson about love, delivered with Lane's characteristic unflashy warmth. Stewart famously disliked the song; Lane's performance proves him wrong.

The song was memorably used in Wes Anderson's Rushmore (1998), introducing it to a generation who had missed the original. Lane died in 1997. He deserved the attention.