Written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, the song's lyrics relate two stories: one is a story of New York City police shooting a boy "right through the heart" because they mistook him for someone else, and the second of a ten-year-old girl who dies in an alley of a drug overdose.

In April 1973 a ten-year-old boy named Clifford Glover was with his father when plainclothes police stopped them at gunpoint in Queens, in New York City, supposedly having mistaken the two for suspects in an armed robbery (the robbers were described as being about one foot taller than the boy).

[1] After telling the story of the police shooting the wrong person, Jagger sings, The .44 magnum cartridge had recently been made famous by the 1971 film Dirty Harry, in which Harry Callahan uses "the most powerful handgun in the world" to cleanse the streets of crime.

The lyrics complement the music, which Rolling Stone magazine described as "urban R&B" for its funk influence and prominent clavinet part (played by Billy Preston).

Cash Box called it a "powerhouse rocker to once again rocket the Stones to the Top of the Pops" that is "filled with that hard Jagger vocal sensuality and a very tasty bass line.