“Paint It Black” by The Rolling Stones

"Paint It Black" hit the shops in May 1966, London Records handling it in America and Decca at home in Britain, and it's the sound of the Rolling Stones pulling the curtains shut. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards took the writing credit, but the thing grew out of Brian Jones improvising melodies on a sitar, all five Stones had a hand in shaping it, and Andrew Loog Oldham produced.

Nothing the Stones had put out before sounded like it. The sitar drones and darts, a Hammond organ hums underneath, castanets rattle like dry bones, and the beat stomps on like a funeral march in a hurry. It's raga rock with Indian, Middle Eastern and Eastern European colors bleeding through, and the words are all grief and loss, as if the whole world has gone dark.

Not everybody bought it at first: some reviewers grumbled that the sitar was a Beatles lift, and others doubted it would sell. It sold. It went to number one in both America and Britain, the first chart-topper with a sitar on it, and in the States it opened the American edition of Aftermath, though the British version left it off. The Grammy Hall of Fame took it in in 2018.

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