Jagger & Richards’ “Stray Cat Blues,” the eighth cut on the 1968 Beggar’s Banquet album, is heard during the first act of David O. Russell‘s Joy, and as soon as it began playing I was feeling it down deep. The right song at the right moment. Russell uses it as a childhood link-up as Joy Mangano‘s 12 year-old self is featured in two or three scenes, and that would be around ’68. The song’s about a jaded rock musician about to do the deed with a 15-year-old runaway who misses her mother while Jennifer Lawrence‘s character is nobody’s pushover or victim — no thematic tie-in.
