The Rolling Stones: Ranking The Albums Best To Worst

14. Between The Buttons

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFaPLEWb3aY Date Of Original Release: 1966 Key Tracks: Let's Spend The Night Together, Ruby Tuesday, Miss Amanda Jones Falling into that strange post-Beatles learn how to smoke weed but pre-Summer of Love hippy revolution time slot, this is a very solid album, but only a few individual songs stand out. There's some goofy poetry on the LP sleeve that you can chalk up to it being written in 1966. The Stones first dip into trippy, pastoral psychedelia, and it holds up quite well. For the first time the Stones approach the LP form as a whole rather than an assemblage of tracks, and as such there's a cohesive, lush mood that permeates the whole record. "Let's Spend The Night Together" and "Ruby Tuesday" are the obvious highlights, but "Miss Amanda Jones" is a great forgotten rocker, an offhanded potshot at a debutante type which is a template for many future Stones songs.

13. 12x5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsPVCuqqjss Date Of Original Release: 1965 Key Tracks: Time is on My Side, It's All Over Now On this album the Stones take their first tentative steps away from being simply a R&B cover band, and towards being a fully-functional original rock band. It's not entirely succesful, but any album with "Time is on My Side" and "It's All Over Now" can't be that bad and ensures its placement in the Top 20. Again, this was only released for the US market and features tracks from their first EP's along with some single and B-side tracks. For American fans, this was the only available way to hear this material, some of which ranks with their very best.