“Dead Flowers” by The Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones cut "Dead Flowers" at Olympic Studios in London in April 1970, and it turned up the next year near the end of Sticky Fingers. It's Jagger and Richards playing cowboys, and playing it with a wink: this was the stretch when country music had crept into the band, helped along by Keith Richards' friendship with Gram Parsons.

The band plays it straight, a loping honky-tonk shuffle with Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman keeping it easy, Ian Stewart on piano and Jimmy Miller producing. Richards and Mick Taylor trade twangy lead lines all the way through. Jagger, by his own later account more blues singer than country singer, sneers the vocal rather than croons it, and the words are darker than the tune lets on, with a sly reference to shooting heroin buried in there.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.