The songwriting partnership of Keith Richards and Mick Jagger produced fourteen compositions that appear on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" — a figure that speaks to the sustained reach of one of the most documented collaborations in popular music.

Richards was born on 18 December 1943 in Dartford and holds United Kingdom citizenship. He attended Wentworth Primary School, then Wilmington Grammar School for Boys, followed by Wilmington Academy, before completing his education at Sidcup Art College. He first appeared professionally under the name Keith Richard, the version of his surname he used in the early part of his public life; it was not until 1978 that he fully reasserted the family name Richards.

A founding member of the Rolling Stones, Richards has served the band as a guitarist, secondary vocalist, and co-principal songwriter alongside Jagger across a career spanning more than six decades. He also works as a record producer. In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him tenth on its list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time." Alongside the music, Richards attracted considerable press attention for his romantic involvements and illicit drug use, a notoriety that ran in parallel with his professional life for much of his career.

The partnership with Jagger remains the most concrete measure of Richards's output as a songwriter. Those fourteen entries on Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" represent the documented critical record of a collaboration that has persisted through more than six decades of work with the Rolling Stones.