Blind Dog Radio

Stop Breakin' Down Blues (Single) by Robert Johnson

'Stop Breakin' Down Blues' is one of the most unusual, yet one of the finest songs Robert Johnson ever wrote, and is one of the few songs by the artist that has been covered successfully, with the Rolling Stones performing a magnificent version of the song on Exile On Main Street'. The original, however, is eerie, otherworldly, and inspired. The lyrics are powerful, and the song contains one of Johnson's most quoted lines – 'The stuff I got'll bust your brains out baby', and it is the repetition of this line that gives the song much of it's power. Johnson was a genius at saying a great deal with simple, colloquial language. This trait of his genius is perhaps most evident in 'Stop Breakin' Down Blues'. - Review by Thomas Ward