Songfacts®:

• This is the title track from the album that showed the band together on the cover for the first time since Their Satanic Majesties Request in 1967 (Annie Leibovitz took the photo). There was no bonhomie in the band, though: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards weren't getting along, and Jagger was putting his best efforts into his solo career.
  
  The song itself is angry, but very vague, with Jagger ranting about a woman who finds someone else to do her dirty work for free. In Steely Dan's 1972 song "Dirty Work," the phrase is used to describe cheating.
• This was one of the few Stones songs that Ron Wood got a writing credit for. He came up with the guitar part he played with Keith Richards.
• The album came out in the middle of a scandal over offensive content in rock music. Many conservative groups, including a bunch of politician's wives called the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), were trying to get music they considered offensive banned from radio and TV. The Rolling Stones were not targeted by the PMRC, probably because many of their members liked the group, and The Stones record company kept it that way by wrapping the album in red plastic to hide any offensive words.