2. Beggars Banquet (1968)

Beggars Banquet came as a total surprise — backing down on the all-together-now peace and love vibe of Between The Buttons and the trippy sentiments of Satanic Majesties in favor of a frightening, dystopian, and fearfully violent worldview. That the assassination of the Kennedys still stings nearly fifty years later is a window into the raw wound that Jagger addressed with his chilling take on their slaughter — “after all it was you and me.” Jagger’s sentiment could be interpreted a lot of ways — maybe it was cruel. But it would have been impossible to not be preoccupied in this way. Bobby Kennedy was killed just six months previous to the release of the record. Martin Luther King had been shot a few months earlier. What was left of the ’60s, and “pacifism,” was an awkward joke. The Stones understood this. “Street Fighting Man” was “White Riot” before the Clash. “Salt Of The Earth” was an elegy for every working person left in the mines or factory workers suffering from a choice of cancer or polio. The Stones were never a vision of utopia. Here, at least, they imagined a future.