Flowers

This album represents a turning point for the Stones. Though they had not yet fully integrated the baroque aspirations of pop into their music, the flower-power influence had nonetheless begun to take root. While all the earlier elements of their sound are still firmly in place, in the folky “Backstreet Girl” and the relentlessly rocking “Let’s Spend The Night Together,” new sounds also crop up. Cuts like the woodwind-sweetened ballad “Ruby Tuesday” and the Middle Eastern-tinged “Mother’s Little Helper” set the stage for the full-blown head-trip that would unveil itself later that year on THEIR SATANIC MAJESTIES REQUEST.