This is the one where the Stones stopped borrowing. Every song on Aftermath is a Jagger/Richards original, the first Rolling Stones album with no covers on it at all, and you can hear the band testing what that freedom lets them do. The blues is still in the foundation, but it’s no longer the ceiling.

So the record wanders. There’s an instrument here that belongs to a different continent, a long sprawling closer that breaks the three-minute rule, and a willingness to let a song be uglier or stranger than a hit single is supposed to be. Brian Jones is all over it, reaching for whatever made each track feel less ordinary.

The US edition opens on the album’s biggest swing, a number one that sounds nothing like the band that recorded it the year before. Start there. Then notice how far the rest of the record is willing to go.