[2] Following the success of their previous album, Some Girls, their biggest hit to date, the Rolling Stones returned to the studio in early 1979 to start writing and recording its follow-up.

Full-time members Mick Jagger (vocals), Keith Richards (guitar), Ronnie Wood (guitar), Bill Wyman (bass) and Charlie Watts (drums) were joined by frequent collaborators Ian Stewart (keyboards), Nicky Hopkins (keyboards), Bobby Keys (saxophone) and Sugar Blue (harmonica).

Fresh from the revitalization of Some Girls (1978), Richards and Mick Jagger led the Stones through dozens of new songs, some of which were held over for Tattoo You (1981), and picked 10 for Emotional Rescue.

Several of the tracks on the album featured just the core Rolling Stones band members: Jagger, Richards, Ronnie Wood, Charlie Watts, and Bill Wyman.

The album cover for Emotional Rescue had concept origination, art direction and design by Peter Corriston with thermographic photos taken by British-born, Paris-based artist Roy Adzak using a thermal camera, a device that measures heat emissions.

A short time later a second video for "Emotional Rescue" was shot, directed by David Mallett (produced by Paul Flattery & Simon Fields) as well as one for "She's So Cold".

[5] In Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s (1990), Christgau said that, while not "great", the album boasts a "mid-'60s [lyrical] charm" in "such tossed-off tropes as 'Where the Boys Go' and 'She's So Cold'", alongside a musical style "looser" than other less-than-great Stones records like It's Only Rock 'n Roll (1974): "[The music is] far more allusive and irregular and knowing: for better and worse its drive isn't so monolithic, and the bass comes front and center like Bill was James Jamerson.

The 1994 remaster was initially released in a Collector's Edition CD, which replicated many elements of the original album packaging, including the colour poster.