I decided to go with a 4fer today. (Because I am a caring individual, at least that what I tell my VA councilor 😁. I decided to roll with the "Streets of Fire" soundtrack. I had bought the movie as a VHS and the soundtrack on CD. I would up dubbing "What it means to be young" and I can dream about you" on a cassette tape that I would play in the Mustang
Looked like this one, but not this one.
while I was stationed in Germany. To me the movie got a short shrift by the critics, the movie was pretty good and the soundtrack was awesome, and "Diane Lane" was really hot, I was a G.I. and the movie had a lot of action, shootemups, and other things, This was the 80's and the soundtracks could make or break a movie. I do wonder what kind of lever actions they used in the movie. They don't look like regular Winchester 1894 series rifles. to me....Found out...Marlin 336 Lever action in Stainless....Now I really want one...
I did a bit of research, it will have to be the 1894 version for the .38/357 magnum version I want, because it shares calibers with my wheelguns.
Streets of Fire is a 1984 film directed by Walter Hill and co-written by Hill and Larry Gross. It is described in its opening credits and posters as "A Rock & RollFable".The film is a mix of musical, action, neo-noir, drama, and comedy, with elements of retro-1950s and 1980s. It stars Michael Paré as a soldier of fortune who returns home to rescue his ex-girlfriend (Diane Lane) who has been kidnapped by the leader of a biker gang (Willem Dafoe). Some of the film was shot on the backlot of Universal Studios in California, on two large sets covered in a tarp 1,240 feet long by 220 feet wide, so that night scenes could be filmed during the day.
Jimmy Iovine produced five of the songs for the film and the soundtrack album. For Ellen Aim's singing voice, he combined the voices of Laurie Sargent and Holly Sherwood, billing them as "Fire Incorporated." The Attackers were the real-life (Face to Face) bandmates of Sargent, who provided the lead vocals on Ellen Aim's songs "Nowhere Fast", "Never Be You" and "Sorcerer", and supporting vocals on "Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young." The version of "Sorcerer," written and composed by Stevie Nicks, that was featured on the actual soundtrack album was performed by Marilyn Martin. The version of "Never Be You" that was featured on the soundtrack album was performed by Maria McKee.
Two songs written by Jim Steinman were part of the soundtrack: "Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young" and "Nowhere Fast", both performed by "Fire Incorporated", with Holly Sherwood providing lead vocals on the former and Laurie Sargent on the latter.
In this song, the girl that you see they focus on was the same girl played in "The Warriors", you know the movie in the late 70's that became the cult classic. yeah that movie, speaking of the Warrior movie, when I watch it, I was listening to the slang and I knew what all of it meant as soon as I heard it, She plays in this movie also.
The title of the former was used as the tagline on some promotional materials for the film. Dan Hartman's selection "I Can Dream About You" is the most successful song from the movie, and became a Billboard top 10 hit in 1984 (also from his studio album of the same name). In the movie, the song is performed on stage at the end of the film by "The Sorels," a fictional doo-wop style group consisting of actors Stoney Jackson, Grand L. Bush, Mykelti Williamson, and Robert Townsend. However, the song was actually sung for the film by Winston Ford, whose vocals were lip-synched by Jackson in the movie. While there are thus two versions of the song, only Hartman's version was released commercially. Steinman later recalled thinking the script was "terrible", but he thought the film was going to be a big hit, in part because of the enthusiasm of Joel Silver:
[He said] this movie is about visuals. It's about excitement, it's about thrills. Don't worry about the script... I remember mentioning it to six or seven people that the script was trashy and I always got the same answer... The script doesn't matter. This movie is about visuals... Then we go to the first edit, the first cut of the movie in the screening room and it's [Jimmy] Iovine and me and Joel Silver... And about 20 minutes into the movie Jimmy turns to me and he goes... this movie is really shitty isn't it? It's really bad. I said, yeah, it's a really bad script. Why didn't anyone notice that the script was bad? It stinks. I can't even watch it... Joel's on the other side going, what am I gonna do next? There's gotta be a next project, and they're sitting there and there's so many lessons I learned during that movie. It went $14 million over budget, I think and I kept saying to Joel, how are they allowing this? 'Cause they kept screaming at us, it's over the budget. I said, how, and they, you've gotta understand, they built all, Walter Hill didn't want to go to Chicago. The story took place in Chicago, so they built Chicago in LA.
Steinman has said the filmmakers were convinced they would have the rights to the Bruce Springsteen song Streets of Fire, and filmed an ending using it. However, when they realized they would not get it in time, they asked Steinman for a song, which he wrote in two days. The song was "Tonight what it means to be young"
Two music videos accompanied the song. One does not feature Hartman and consists of scenes from Streets of Fire, intercut with footage of the Sorels miming the song as part of a live performance. The lead singer was played by Stoney Jackson, with Grand L. Bush, Mykelti Williamson, and Robert Townsend as backing singers. In the second video, filmed at the Hard Rock in London, Hartman appears as a bartender trying to charm a young woman (played by Joyce Hyser), singing to her as the Sorels' performance plays on a TV set hanging above the bar. In a 2010 interview with Hyser for the blog Old School: Back to the 80s, she was asked how she came to feature in the video. She replied, "I knew Dan's manager and he asked me if I would do it. We shot at the Hard Rock in London. I honestly remember very little about it, but Dan was very nice and I absolutely love that song. I did another music video for ZZ Top's song "Pin Cushion" which I really like. It was directed by Julian Temple." While recording a mimed TV performance of the song, Hartman explained why one music video featured actors: "The producers and directors of Streets of Fire wanted the best of everything, so they hired the best singers, the best dancers and best actors to play the parts in the film. So the singers in "I Can Dream About You" who are the Sorels are actually actors, and I wrote and sang this song."
This song came came out while I was stationed in Fort Devens in Massachusetts for A.I.T. Remember I associate songs to places and people and times. I didn't like the state or the location a whole lot. I did love Boston though, but that is a different story. I did like the material taught though. I was toward the end of my time at A.I.T. it was a 9 month course, (Yeah it sucked at times) Ayer(town right outside Devens) Massachusetts existed to separate the G.I from their dollar as fast as possible with as much pain to the G.I in the process. No we were not appreciated.(I'm sure the people in Benning and Hinesville can understand the reference, LOL) I will relate a story, I had gotten orders to go to Germany and in my orders was "authorization to ship P.O.V." (Basically I could ship my car to Germany and the Army would pay for it.) and I went to the Ford dealership *Ayer Ford* and I was looking at a Tempo GT
I always thought the Car was futuristic and cool looking. well anyway...They wanted me to get approval from my Commanding officer...*Say What?* My Credit was good ...for a 20 year old soldier anyway...before even running my paperwork through Ford Motor Credit. I was pissed. So I went to *Lunenburg Ford* 12 miles away and bought my Mustang, and they didn't care, as long as my credit was good....and no I didn't get the 28% APR, LOL and no I didn't marry the stripper either.
Not My mustang, but one like it, Same color and interior. Well anyway. I was good friends with a girl, she had joined after her son had died, she was married and her Husband was a Vietnam War veteran. This was something that she felt that she had to do. We became really good friends in the course, she was my bestie. we were inseparable, and no we never did anything inappropriate. She was married and I ain't Jodi. Yeah I still think of her when I hear this song and hope she found the peace she was looking for. I lost touch with her when I went to Germany, and she went to her Duty Station, through the mist of time I can't remember what it was, I want to say it was either Fort Lee, Meade or Lewis. I later bought a "Greatest Hits CD" and burned a cassette version and used it in my mustang as I cruised the autobahns.
"Your Wildest Dreams" is a 1986 single by the progressive rock band The Moody Blues, and it was written by the band's lead guitarist Justin Hayward. The song was first released as a single, and was later released on the Moody Blues 1986 album The Other Side of Life. It was a top-10 hit in the United States, peaking at #9, which had not happened to a Moody Blues song since "Nights in White Satin" in 1972. The song also became an Adult Contemporary number-one hit, and also charted at number two on the Mainstream Rock chart. The Moody Blues' previous album, The Present, was relatively unsuccessful, although it did contain a couple of moderately successful singles. This caused the Moody Blues to lose some of their popularity among younger audiences. The success of "Your Wildest Dreams" reintroduced the Moody Blues to this younger audience, and their popularity was boosted even higher than before as a result. With the band moving towards a more electronic sound, the Moody Blues relied less upon band member Ray Thomas and his flute skills—"Your Wildest Dreams" was one of the first singles not to feature Thomas at all—though Thomas would continue to be a major asset to the Moody Blues' concerts, as he would continue to play flute on their earlier songs, in addition to being a back-up vocalist. The lyrics of "Your Wildest Dreams" tell the story of a man who is remembering his first love, and wonders if she remembers him the way he remembers her. "Your Wildest Dreams" was followed up by a sequel in 1988. The sequel is titled "I Know You're Out There Somewhere", and it appears on the Moody Blues album Sur la Mer. A music video was also produced for "Your Wildest Dreams", which received a Billboard Video of the Year award. The video was frequently featured on MTV. The model in the video is Janet Spencer-Turner.
I heard this song several times on my Sirius/XM and I never got the name of the song or the singer and it was one of those quirky fun songs that flourished in the 1980's. Well Last Monday on the way to work, I actually got the name of the song and I was flabbergasted by the title. I decided to use this song on my next "Monday Music". You know how many pics there are on the internet Using "Girls with Guns".
What kinda prompted this post besides the Monday Music thingie that I do, was that I went to the range over the weekend, Will post tomorrow
This one is very mild, there were some er most that were NSFW
Girls with Guns is the debut solo album from Styx guitarist/vocalist Tommy Shaw. It was released in October 1984 by A&M Records.
The title track was a top 10 hit at rock radio, peaking at #6 on the BillboardMainstream Rock Tracks chart and reaching a high of #33 on the Billboard Hot 100. "Girls With Guns" was featured in the first season Miami Vice episode "Glades". A second single, the ballad "Lonely School", was released in late 1984 and peaked at #60 on the Hot 100 in January 1985. The videos for both singles received premiere status and strong rotation at MTV, and the network aired a concert special featuring Shaw. The CD and cassette formats of the album feature extended versions of the ballad "Kiss Me Hello" and the dance-rock track "Outside in the Rain". The Girls With Guns album charted on the Billboard 200 Albums chart for 25 weeks, peaking at #50.
I decided to roll with Vanilla ICE today for my Monday Music.
The first time I heard of "Vanilla Ice" was in 1990 and we had gotten a group of new soldiers and they were talking about this thing called "rap" and vanilla ice was their spokesman for lack of a better word, Remember by this time I was 25 years old, been in the green machine 6 years and didn't have the same interest as the younger soldiers. That was the first time I really experienced "The generation gap". Seeing a couple of Italian kids trying to rap was hilarious.
I listened to the song..."like I had a choice", it was everywhere!!!. I did notice that the AFN station would start it off with "under Pressure" by Queen then follow it with vanilla Ice or they would reverse it. It made for an interesting combination. I have gotten used to the song, it don't grate on me like it used to. I do know that Vanilla Ice had a hard time with "Street Creed" in the rapper scene. Being a white guy in basically a black music world was hard and he didn't get the respect he should have gotten.
The later rapper Emimen in my mind had it a bit easier because Vanilla Ice was there before but in a way Eminem had it harder because of the controversy surrounding Vanilla Ice. Eminem really had "street Creed" in spades, where Vanilla was accused of manufacturing his. After Vanilla faded out of the mainstream music stream he had to reinvent himself to get away from the image. From what I have seen he has done a good job, he has a dedicated base to his music and he is "keeping it real".
"Ice Ice Baby" is a hip hop song written by American rapperVanilla Ice and DJ Earthquake based on the bassline of "Under Pressure" by Queen and David Bowie, who did not initially receive songwriting credit or royalties until after it had become a hit. Originally released on Vanilla Ice's 1989 debut album Hooked and later on his 1990 national debut To the Extreme, it is his most well known song. It has appeared in remixed form on Platinum Underground and Vanilla Ice Is Back! A live version appears on the album Extremely Live, while a rap rock version appears on the album Hard to Swallow, under the title "Too Cold". "Ice Ice Baby" was initially released as the B-side to Vanilla Ice's cover of "Play That Funky Music", but the single was not initially successful. When disc jockey David Morales played "Ice Ice Baby" instead, it began to gain success. "Ice Ice Baby" was the first hip hop single to top the Billboard Hot 100. Outside the United States, the song topped the charts in Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, thus helping the song diversify hip hop by introducing it to a mainstream audience. The song came fifth in VH1 and Blender's 2004 list of the "50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs Ever."
Robert Van Winkle, better known by his stage name Vanilla Ice, wrote "Ice Ice Baby" in 1983 at the age of 16, basing its lyrics upon his experiences in South Florida. The lyrics describe a shooting and Van Winkle's rhyming skills. The chorus of "Ice Ice Baby" originates from the signature chant of the national African American fraternity Alpha Phi Alpha. Of the song's lyrics, Van Winkle states that "If you released 'Ice Ice Baby' today, it would fit in today's lyrical respect among peers, you know what I'm sayin'? [...] My lyrics aren't, 'Pump it up, go! Go!' At least I'm sayin' somethin'." The song's hook samples the bassline of the 1981 song "Under Pressure" by Queen and David Bowie who did not receive credit or royalties for the sample. In a 1990 interview, Van Winkle said the two melodies were slightly different because he had added an additional note, an anacrusis ("pickup") between odd-numbered and subsequent even-numbered iterations of the Under Pressure sample. In later interviews, Van Winkle readily admitted he sampled the song and claimed his 1990 statement was a joke; others, however, suggested he had been serious. Van Winkle later paid Queen and Bowie and as a result, Bowie and all members of Queen have since been given songwriting credit for the sample. In December 1990, Van Winkle told British youth music magazine Smash Hits where he came up with the idea of sampling "Under Pressure":
“
The way I do stuff is to go through old records that my brother has. He used to listen to rock 'n' roll and stuff like that. I listened to funk and hip hop because rock wasn't really my era. But having a brother like that, well, I just mixed the two, and he had a copy of 'Under Pressure'. And putting those sounds to hip hop was great.
”
Van Winkle described himself as the first rapper to cross into the pop market and said that although his pioneer status forced him to "take the heat for a lot of people" for his music's use of samples, the criticism he received over sample use allowed sampling to become acceptable in mainstream hip hop.
This is another one of those songs that I can play over and over again, especially on the bike when I am riding, Or driving my truck in the early morning driving to work like I did this morning, hence the selection of the sing after I got to work for my "Monday Music"
I remembered this song hitting in 1983 on the MTV music circuit, you know MTV...Back when they played Music video's rather than the insipid reality shows and other crap. and I thought it was a pretty cool song, but it faded away and I forgot about the song until my Sirius/XM did their forgotten hit with cuts from Indiana Jones and "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and this song came on and it was a "Eureka" moment and I recalled the song and saved it and bootlegged it on an app I have on my phone.
"Birds Fly (Whisper to a Scream)", given the reversed title "Whisper to a Scream (Birds Fly)" in some markets, is a song by the British band The Icicle Works. It was released in 1983 as the first single from the band's 1984 debut eponymous album The Icicle Works. The song was written by Ian McNabb, the band's lead singer, and produced by Hugh Jones.
The Icicle Works is the eponymous debut album by The Icicle Works. The album was released in 1984 and charted at number 24 in the UK and number 40 in the US. The original 1984 issue features different track listings and cover artwork in the UK, in the USA, and in Canada. In 2006, Beggars Banquet Records issued both a 2-CD and a limited edition 3-CD expanded edition of The Icicle Works. Disc 1 consists of the original album in its entirety, in the UK configuration. Disc 2 features a selection of b-sides, radio sessions, and remixes, as well as one live track. On the 3-CD edition, the first 10 tracks of disc 3 consist of "radio session" versions of the songs from the original UK Icicle Works album; they are presented in the original UK album sequence. Disc 3 then concludes with a previously released b-side, and a previously unreleased album outtake. The US version of the album has a remixed and re-titled version of "Birds Fly (Whisper to a Scream)". The US remix does not include the female spoken introduction heard on the UK mix. The US album was released by Arista Records.
Pitchfork Media described the song "Love Is a Wonderful Colour" as "one of those "wow where was this hiding?" tracks that make you think there's something left to 80s crate-digging.
I was driving in to work and this song *Popped up* as a preset alert on my Sirius/XM so I listened to it several times back to back on the drive to work, I would remember things while I drive, especially my interaction with my Dad who really liked the series "Call of Duty" and the Stones were from his generation, and for me this song is the only song and of course "Sympathy For The Devil" that I liked. I ain't knocking the Stones, it is a personal preference thing and of course there is the belief that Pete Townsend will be there for the end of time since he seemed to never change, he is the real "Dorian Gray".LOL I have ran this song several times in the past, it is one of the few I will run repeats on....
Well anyway, I didn't post anything this weekend, was very busy.....I decided to make room...in my garage......for the F150....Shocker.....Took a lot of work...
A lot of rearranging....chunked some stuff.....moved some stuff to the shed....a LOT of lifting.....Man I was sore..but the results were cool
I never was able to get my F150 into the garage, neither my 1999 or my 2021....until now....I was able to get my focuses in there....but never the trucks.
I always associate the song "Paint it black" with the series "Call OF Duty" that the song was the opening lyrics for in the 1980's.
Vietnam was a taboo subject for a while the wounds that the conflict left on the American Psyche was deep. We had won the battles but lost the war because we as a nation had lost the will to fight it thanks to the media and the hippies and the antiwar movement that was funded by the communist party and liberal donors. it took several years before Vietnam could be discussed outside of the veterans. My Dad was a Vietnam Veteran, he did a tour in 1968 and dealt with the tunnels of Cu-Chi and the Tet Offensive, then he returned in 1972 for a second tour. For a while especially in the 1970's, the Vietnam vet was portrayed as crazy or dangerous. The specter of Vietnam dogged every use of the Military or any support during the 1980's, from Grenada, to Beirut, to Honduras and Nicaragua. The Ghost of Vietnam were finally laid to rest during Desert Storm.
I decided to roll with "Paint it black" It is a Rolling Stone song that was used in the opening credits of a TV series that we GI's watched in the barracks. We liked the realism, the attention to detail, they had used Vietnam veterans as advisers to ensure the realism and gritty reality...for 80's TV anyway. When the show came on, the dayroom was full as everybody clustered around the AFN broadcast of the show. This song is the only song by the Rolling Stones that I really liked.....We would cheer when the soldiers would shoot up Charlie and the firefights. The interplay of the people was very well done, we liked the way the new LT played by Stephen Caffrey was mentored by the platoon sergeant played by Terrance Knox. All the other guys also played well on each other and at the end of the video, it showed the 3 soldiers standing at attention and saluting the flag on TV at the end of the broadcast day....when they played the national Anthem. That was telling for me. The simple patriotism showed represented the beliefs of the Veterans in their country..
"Paint It Black" is a song recorded in 1966 by the English rock band the Rolling Stones. A product of the songwriting partnership of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, it is a raga rock song with Indian, Middle Eastern, and Eastern European influences and lyrics about grief and loss. London Records released the song as a single on 7 May 1966 in the United States, and Decca Records released it on 13 May in the United Kingdom. Two months later, London Records included it as the opening track on the American version of the band's 1966 studio album Aftermath, though it is not on the original UK release.
Originating from a series of improvisational melodies played by Brian Jones on the sitar, all five members of the band contributed to the final arrangement, although only Jagger and Richards were credited as songwriters. In contrast to previous Rolling Stones singles with straightforward rock arrangements, "Paint It Black" has unconventional instrumentation including a prominent sitar, the Hammond organ, and castanets. This instrumental experimentation matches other songs on Aftermath. The song was influential to the burgeoning psychedelic genre as the first chart-topping single to feature the sitar, and widened the instrument's audience. Reviews of the song at the time were mixed and some music critics believed its use of the sitar was an attempt to copy the Beatles, and others criticized its experimental style and doubted its commercial potential.
"Paint It Black" was a major chart success for the Rolling Stones, at eleven weeks (including two at number one) on the US Billboard Hot 100, and 10 weeks (including one atop the chart) on the Record Retailer chart in the UK. Upon a re-issue in 2007, it reentered the UK Singles Chart for 11 weeks. It was the band's third number-one single in the US and sixth in the UK. The song also topped charts in Canada and the Netherlands. It received a platinum certification in the UK from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) and from Italy's Federazione Industria Musicale Italiana (FIMI).
In 1965, popularity of the Rolling Stones increased markedly with a series of international hit singles written by lead singer Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards.While 1964 saw the band reach the top of both the albums and singles charts in their native United Kingdom, other bands from Britain dominated the American market, such as the Beatles. In 1965, the Stones crossed over to the American Market with their first number one single, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", and first number one album Out of Our Heads. That year also saw the Stones reach the top of the charts for the first time in countries such as Finland, Germany, and South Africa.
This success attracted the attention of Allen Klein, an American businessman who became their US representative in August while Andrew Loog Oldham, the group's manager, continued in the role of promoter and record producer.[4] One of Klein's first actions on the band's behalf was to force Decca Records to grant a $1.2 million royalty advance to the group, bringing the members their first signs of financial wealth and allowing them to purchase country houses and new cars. Their October–December 1965 tour of North America was the group's fourth and largest tour there up to that point.According to the biographer Victor Bockris, through Klein's involvement, the concerts afforded the band "more publicity, more protection and higher fees than ever before".
By this time, the Rolling Stones had begun to respond to the increasingly sophisticated music of the Beatles, in comparison to whom they had long been promoted by Oldham as a rougher alternative.With the success of the Jagger-Richards-penned singles "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" (1965), "Get Off of My Cloud" (1965) and "19th Nervous Breakdown" (1966), the band increasingly rivalled the musical and cultural influence of the Beatles, and began to be identified as one of the major pillars of the British Invasion. The Stones' outspoken, surly attitude on songs like "Satisfaction" alienated the Establishment detractors of rock music, which music historian Colin King explains, "only made the group more appealing to those sons and daughters who found themselves estranged from the hypocrisies of the adult world – an element that would solidify into an increasingly militant and disenchanted counterculture as the decade wore on".
"Paint It Black" came at a pivotal period in the band's recording history. The Jagger/Richards songwriting collaboration had begun producing more original material for the band over the past year, with the early model of Stones albums featuring only a few Jagger-Richards compositions having been replaced by that of albums such as Out of Our Heads and December's Children (and Everybody's), each of which consisted of half original tracks and half cover songs. This trend culminated in the sessions for Aftermath (1966) where, for the first time, the duo penned every track on the album. Brian Jones, originally the band's founder and leader over the first few years of its existence, began feeling overshadowed by the prominence of Jagger and Richards' contributions to the group.
Despite having contributed to early songs by the Stones via the Nanker Phelge pseudonym, Jones had less and less influence over the group's direction as their popularity grew primarily as a result of original Jagger-Richards singles. Jones grew bored attempting to write songs, and with conventional guitar melodies. To alleviate his boredom, he begun exploring Eastern instruments, specifically the Indian sitar, with a goal to bolstering the musical texture and complexity of the band's sound. A multi-instrumentalist, Jones could develop a tune on the sitar in a short time; he had a background with the instrument largely from his studies under Harihar Rao, a disciple of Ravi Shankar.
Over 1965, the sitar had become a more and more prominent instrument in the landscape of british rock. The Yardbirds had attempted to record "Heart Full of Soul" with the sitar as part of the arrangement in April, however they had run into problems getting the instrument to "cut through" the mix, and the session musician responsible for playing the instrument had trouble staying within the 4/4 time signature of the song. Ultimately, the final version of "Heart Full of Soul" featured a fuzz guitar in place of the sitar, although the song's distinctively Indian timbre remained. Following similar Indian-influenced experimentation by the Kinks on "See My Friends" that nonetheless still used guitar as the primary instrument, the first British band to release a recording featuring the sitar was the Beatles, with "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" released that December on the album Rubber Soul. Following a discussion with the Beatles' lead guitarist George Harrison, who had recently played the sitar on the sessions for "Norwegian Wood" in October 1965, Jones began devoting more time to the sitar, and began arranging basic melodies with the instrument. One of these melodies morphed over time into the tune featured in "Paint It Black"
Initial reaction to "Paint It Black" was mixed. Some music critics found the addition of the sitar to be simply a case of the band copying the Beatles.n his book Brian Jones: The Making of the Rolling Stones, Paul Trynka comments on the influence of Harrison's sitar playing on the Beatles' song "Norwegian Wood" from the Rubber Soul album and draws parallels with Jones' droning sitar melody on "Paint It Black". Responding to claims that he was imitating the Beatles, Jones replied: "What utter rubbish", comparing the argument to saying that all groups using a guitar copy each other merely by using the instrument. Jonathan Bellman, an American musicologist, agreed with Jones, writing in a 1997 issue of The Journal of Musicology that the events are an example of concurrent musical and instrumental experimentation. Jones' sitar part on the track influenced the development of a whole subgenre of minor-key psychedelic music.
Lindy Shannon of the La Crosse Tribune felt "Paint It Black", the Byrds' "Eight Miles High" and the Beatles' "Rain" were straying from the "commercial field" and instead "going into a sort of distorted area of unpleasant sounds". Staff at Melody Maker lauded the track, calling it "a glorious Indian raga-riot that will send the Stones back to number one".Writing for Disc and Music Echo, Penny Valentine praised Jagger's singing, writing that it was "better than ever" but was critical of the track's sitar Guitar Player's Jesse Gress cited "Paint It Black" as originating the 1960s ragarock craze.In a review for New Musical Express (NME), Keith Altham considered "Paint It Black" the band's best single since "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" was released the previous year. A reviewer for Billboard predicted that Aftermath would become another hit for the band, citing "Paint It Black" as the focal point of this hard rock album and praising Oldham's production. The Herald News considered the song a "top record... for teeners", and in The Sunday Press Nancy Brown described it as a "pulsating, blues-soaked romantic tear-jerker".In the San Francisco Examiner, Ralph J. Gleason lauded the song for its "hypnotizing tone" and "same qualities of ambiguity and obscurity as some of the previous Stones hits". In April 1967, while hosting the television documentary Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution, Leonard Bernstein praised the song for its "arab café" sound, and cited it as an example of contemporary pop music's ability to evoke disparate moods through instrumentation.
In a retrospective review, Richie Unterberger of AllMusic called the song an "eerily insistent" classic that features some of "the best use of sitar on a rock record", and in another AllMusic review wrote it is "perhaps the most effective use of the Indian instrument in a rock song". Writing on the song's 50th anniversary in 2016, Dave Swanson of Ultimate Classic Rock considered the song, like its parent album Aftermath, to be a major turning point in artistic evolution for the band, noting: "'Paint It, Black' wasn't just another song by just another rock group; it was an explosion of ideas presented in one neat three-minute package." In 2017, ranking Aftermath as one of the best albums of the 1960s, Judy Berman of Pitchfork described the song as "rock's most nihilistic hit to date".vid Palmer, editor of the Cullman Times, wrote that the "attitude" songs on Aftermath – particularly "Paint It Black" – influenced the nihilistic outlook of punk music. Stereogum critic Tom Breihan praised the song as a strong example of the band's brand of "swirling doom-blues", and praised its heavy sound and dark lyrics as ahead of its time when compared to the landscape of popular music in 1966.
