Today the inimitable Keith Richards is exactly 80 years, 2 months, and 6 days old. What’s the significance of that particular milestone? Absolutely nothing. But at a certain point it seems like maybe waiting for birthdays and anniversaries to pay someone tribute isn’t the most pragmatic way to go.

As everyone knows, Keith stepped out front to contribute some truly unique gems to the Rolling Stones historic catalog, generally one selection per album. And he’s also completed three solo records, most notably his first, 1988’s Talk Is Cheap, which at the time was half-jokingly referred to as the best Rolling Stones album in years.

So what we’re leading up to is this: a Best of Keith Richards playlist. 20 Stones and solo songs where Keith’s incomparable riffs are met with his unmistakable vocals. Plus, to close it out, two classic Rolling Stones numbers where Keith-sung passages, like most everything else he’s touched, make them unforgettable.

First, the post-chorus refrain in ‘Memory Motel’:

“She got a mind of her own / And she use it well / Well she’s one of a kind”

And last, the opening verse of ‘Salt of the Earth,’ the emotional closing track to Beggar’s Banquet, which Richards, together with fellow Glimmer Twin Mick Jagger, most memorably performed at The Concert for New York City at Madison Square Garden on Oct. 20, 2001, 39 days after 9/11.

“Let’s drink to the hard-working people / Let’s drink to the lowly of birth
Raise your glass to the good and the evil / Let’s drink to the salt of the earth”

How about we raise our glass and drink to Keith Richards. Never better than the present; as Richards wrote in 1974, “Time waits for no one.”