Why is "Paint It Black" the most-played Rolling Stones song on Spotify?

Look, it has over 1.7 billion streams. The next most played Stones song — "Satisfaction" — has only 940 million.

I think it's the non-Boomers, discovering it through movies and TV and video games and TikTok. Here's a link to see the 180,000+ TikTok videos that use the recording. It seems quite popular with aviation (for males) and the wearing of black clothing (for females). And then there are tattoos:

"[Elon Musk] is reported to have told one of his children’s mothers he wants to use surrogates to 'reach legion level.'"

"In the meantime, he has goaded the competition. In response to a post about [Russian billionaire Pavel] Durov notching triple-digit offspring, Mr. Musk replied, '"Rookie numbers lmao" — Genghis Khan,' a nod to the Mongol leader’s supposed millions of descendants. What drives these men to reproduce at an industrial scale? Mr. Musk’s reference to Genghis Khan holds one clue.... Like kings of earlier eras who claimed divine lineage, many of these men hold their own bloodlines in exalted regard. Mr. Musk, who in 2021 changed his job title at Tesla to 'technoking,' has said he wants smart people — or even just rich people, according to a report in Business Insider — to have more children. One of the mothers of his offspring, an executive in his business, told his biographer that he encouraged her to have kids and suggested he be her sperm donor...."

From "Is Kidmaxxing the Ultimate Status Symbol for Ultimate Wealth?" (NYT).

"Technoking" is not a gerund. I can't believe I spent time trying to understand "to technok" as a verb. The "ing" goes with the K. It's "Techno King."

You know, "nok" isn't just the NYSE stock ticker for Nokia. It's the genus of the bare-faced bulbul (Nok hualon). The Nok were an ancient African people, known for their terra cotta sculptures.

And never forget the Nixies — Danish: nøkke, Norwegian: nøkk, Swedish: näck; Icelandic: nykur, Faroese: nykur; Finnish: näkki. These were "male water spirits who play enchanted songs on instruments, luring women and children to drown in lakes or streams." 

So, ladies, resist the nøkk, the techo-nøkk, the technoking. No kings! No nøkkings. Maintain a no-nøkk policy.

But never in my sweet short life...

"Other incidents in the book are merely surreal: the appearance of Bob Dylan in a blue mohair suit..."

"... at [Brian] Jones’s hotel door in the middle of a Northeast blackout in 1965, bearing guitars and 'excellent weed'; a passing mention of future Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as one of the drug buddies who 'revived Keith’s appetite for coke and heroin' in the late 1970s; a young Harvey Weinstein, then a regional concert promoter, passing out Afro wigs to the band and crew during a raucous tour closer in Buffalo."

From "You Can’t Always Get What You Want, Unless It’s a New Rolling Stones Biography/The music journalist Bob Spitz, a keeper of numerous rock ’n’ roll flames, has turned out a colorful and authoritative new take on a much-documented band" (NYT).

Here's the book: "THE ROLLING STONES: The Biography," by Bob Spitz (commission earned). I might buy it. It wouldn't be the first book about The Rolling Stones for me. I read Keith Richards' autobiography. Somehow all I remember is him as a little kid keeping a mouse in his pocket. Blogged here.

But anyway, downloading the Kindle of the Spitz book just so I can do a word search on "mohair" is exactly the kind of thing I would do.

"The left wanted to make comedy illegal.... like, you can't make fun of anything.... Legalize comedy!"

Legalize comedy
pic.twitter.com/uKr6fiRI3K

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 20, 2025

And then, do you think this is funny, wielding a chainsaw? I mean, he's cutting thousands of jobs. Those are real people.

 

Must Watch Video: Elon Musk Has Been Knighted At CPAC After Receiving The Chainsaw For Bureaucracy

» WATCH/SHARE THE LIVE X STREAM HERE:https://t.co/7NYWKPuERO pic.twitter.com/mFe0unDA7u

— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) February 20, 2025

That's Argentina's President Javier Milei, handing Musk the chainsaw, so I went to Milei's feed to try to get the video to embed from Milei's feed, where I got a bit distracted. For example, he reposted this:

 

On this day, February 21 1964, the Rolling Stones released the single Not Fade Away in the UK. Originally a Buddy Holly track, the Stones recorded their version at London’s Olympic Studios and it became the band’s first Top 10 hit in the United Kingdom! 🇬🇧 pic.twitter.com/kkM69cBxUz

— The Rolling Stones (@RollingStones) February 21, 2025

So much masculinity: 1. Comedy, 2. Power tools, 3. The Stones.

ADDED: What is the evidence that Javier Milei loves The Rolling Stones?

"She looks so simple in her way/Does the same thing every day/But she's dedicated/To having her own way/She's very complicated...."

I'm listening to the old Rolling Stones song a propos of this NYT headline:

"Cher joins the Rolling Stones with at least one new No. 1 on a Billboard songs chart in each of the seven decades from the 1960s through the 2020s...."

Billboard reports.

Go to the link if you want to see the names of all those #1s in all the relevant decades.

I've always loved Cher, but for me that means the Cher of 1965 (and the Cher of "Moonstruck"). But if she wants to do a Christmas recording, it's pretty much the way I feel about Bob Dylan doing a Christmas album. Go ahead. Do what you want. You've earned it. And I will continue to avoid the annual avalanche of Christmas music.

Anyway, click if you like. It's Cher's #1 Christmas song:

In honor of his 80th birthday: 80 things about Mick Jagger.

At The Guardian.

A few that struck me the right way:

10. “You do tend to present a yobbish image.” One interviewer suggested this to him as the Stones were breaking through. “Moronic, I think, is a better word,” he replied, deliciously....

15. Great rock stars project vanity. And you don’t get more magnificently vain than Jagger singing “Tell me a story about how you adore me,” on Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?...

25. Jagger is the only middle-class Englishman from Kent who could sing “I met a gin-soaked bar-room queen in Memphis / She tried to take me upstairs for a ride” without it sounding like cosplay....

Before blogging, there were proto-bloggers, and I have encountered another example: Rose Kennedy.

I have commemorated proto-bloggers before. For example, something John Keats did in 1816. And, in the first year of my own blogging, I told you about my grandfather, Pop. And though I can’t find where I've blogged about it, there's something I myself used to do in the 1990s. I'd read the paper NYT at the dining table in the morning and if I found something distinctly interesting, I'd tear it out and put it on the other side of the table, where my sons would see it when they eventually came into the room.

Anyway, the proto-blogger I discovered today was Rose Kennedy. As a consequence of reading that Rebecca Traister article about RFK Jr. — blogged here — I started reading his book "American Values/Lessons I Learned from My Family." 

Here's what I consider to be like blogging:

The complicated woman and the complicated man.

My son John comments on a NYT post at Facebook.

This is a variation on a point I've made a few times: The mainstream media present whatever is true of the woman as good. If the same quality were found to be true of a man, it would be presented as bad.

In this case — complicatedness — is something that — in a woman — feels intriguing and sophisticated. But what the hell is a "complicated man"? We're not wasting our time exploring his psyche. Screw him. He's an asshole.

But the complicated woman....

I've got 10 TikTok selections for you today. Let me know what you liked best.

1. They ruined "Satisfaction."

2. When Johnny Depp impersonated Donald Trump.

3. Reviewing Grandma Sue's pear salad.

4. "Walk That Lonesome Valley."

5. The Queen turns on the lights.

6. "You just have to have the courage of your convictions."

7. The lemon used to douse the shrimp....

8. If European-Americans experienced microaggressions. 

9. The Italian husband thinks his wife must be tricking him about the meaning of "peacock."

10. People who think hating small talk is a personality.

"He stayed courtly and soft-spoken. The Stones would go out regularly, playing larger and larger shows...."

"Watts remained himself, observing life from the drummer’s chair. 'To have to live with being some teenybop idol for Charlie is very difficult, because he’s not like that at all,' [Keith] Richards wrote of Watts. 'Charlie Watts to me is the most honest man in the world — to himself, to everybody. He never even wanted to be a pop star. It still makes him cringe.'.... Watts didn’t survive the Stones’ famously toxic environment entirely. He is said to have eschewed drugs from the start; but during the 1980s (during the dark years of Jagger’s solo efforts), he began drinking and ended up a heroin addict.... He dressed well; by the 1990s. he might wear a bespoke double-breasted suit onstage, and ultimately he ended up in Vanity Fair’s International Best-Dressed Hall of Fame. But he didn’t flail the drums or mug for the crowd; the idea of a Charlie Watts drum solo at a Rolling Stones concert was unthinkable. He just did his job; he never missed a show in his entire career drumming for the band...."

From "Charlie Watts Held the Rolling Stones Together for Half a Century" by Bill Wyman — the journalist, not the Rolling Stones bass player — in New York Magazine.

"He will obsessively listen to one song while working."

"He wrote one of his first plays to Leadbelly’s 'Ol’ Riley.' He listened to Bob Dylan’s 'Like a Rolling Stone' and 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' while writing 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,' and John Lennon’s 'Mother' while writing the play 'Jumpers.'... [Tom Stoppard thinks] that art arises from difficulty and talent. 'Skill without imagination,' one of his characters says, 'is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.'... His idea of a good death, he’s said, would be to have a bookshelf fall on him, killing him instantly, while reading."

From "'Tom Stoppard' Tells of an Enormous Life Spent in Constant Motion," a book review in the NYT.

We've all had the experience of listening to one song obsessively over and over, but under what circumstance? Probably not while trying to get some serious mental work done! We're talking about songs — with words — over and over. Imagine writing a play while Bob sings "Subterranean Homesick Blues" over and over. So annoying! Maybe it helps to set up a big obstacle, to cram out 90% of what would otherwise crowd into your head. 

When have you played one song over and over and why? When I was a teenager, I'd play one song over and over because it was a new song — a missive from the outside world — that I felt I needed to completely internalize. For example, "All You Need Is Love." As an adult, it was an old song that expressed an emotion I was experiencing and benefited from having the company and support. You could say that was an externalizing of what I was feeling. For example, "Fool to Cry."

But I really never want to hear someone else's words when I am trying to write. 

As for the "idea of a good death," would you like a song to be playing? Unless you're in one of those death-bed positions where you can manage the audio, it's likely to be an inappropriate song, perhaps something ironic about how full of life you are, like "I Will Survive."

"Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is planning to resume his prepandemic routine, arguing it will send a positive message that the country’s problems are under control."

"For the first time since before the coronavirus gripped the United States and protesters took to the streets, Trump is lining up in-person fundraisers, trips to his luxury resort in New Jersey and campaign rallies. It’s a sign of the president’s approach to a series of historic crises that lack easy solutions and the longstanding comfort he draws from being bathed in adoration by rally-goers, donors and the rest of his base.... During the weekend, Trump will deliver a commencement address in New York. Next week, he will headline a campaign rally next week in Tulsa, Okla. And the next month he will view fireworks in South Dakota. He also expects to hold rallies in Florida, Arizona and North Carolina in the coming weeks. Plans are also being made for larger fundraisers in the Hamptons, as well as in Tampa the first week of July and in Mississippi the last week of August.... [T]hree people familiar with the situation said Trump expects to be criticized whether he remains inside the White House — he’s already been accused of 'hiding' inside while protests take place just outside the gates — or travels out of Washington, so he doesn’t see a reason not to go. And he contends that the protests, many of which lack social distancing, will make it more difficult for Democrats to criticize him...."

Politico reports.

If you're criticized for anything you do, you can see it as liberating. That's Trump style, empowered by the unrelenting hate. There are so many Trump haters in the media, and they will take whatever raw material he gives them any given day and whip it up into a steaming pile of ORANGE MAN BAD, so he doesn't have to worry about trying to give them raw material that might result in a tastier daily special. It's never going to happen. The man is free...

"Through Mr. Obama, I have been hipped to the Congolese singer Jupiter Bokondji... His prose, always electric, assumes an extra whiff of fire when applied to music."

"'American history wells up when Aretha sings,' Mr. Obama wrote to The New Yorker in response to an email query about the artist in 2016.... 'That’s why, when she sits down at a piano and sings ‘A Natural Woman,’ she can move me to tears,' he said... United States presidents tend not to be celebrated for their groovy record collections. The current officeholder’s favorite Beach Boy is most likely Mike Love, which alone should qualify him for yet another impeachable offense. If this is a bewildering time to be an American, so, too, is it a disconcerting time to be a fan of rock and pop, among the country’s maddest and most characteristic concoctions. Barack Obama, music critic, has become an unlikely balm, his beautifully detailed lists acting as strange flickers of continuity and survival."

From "In Praise of Barack Obama, Music Critic/The former president’s annual year-end playlist never fails to delight" by Jim Ruttenberg in the NYT.

"Balm" is aromatic ointment. Is it strange to say that a person is balm? Perhaps it's wrong, more wrong than calling him a nonhuman animal. He's a gooey substance, to be spread on the skin, for comfort. So weird! But "balm" has long been used figuratively. It can be anything softly soothing. No one, even his fans, would call Donald Trump "balm."

Did you know that in Jamaica, "balm" is "A faith-healing ceremony typically involving drumming, dancing, and ritual feasting; a herbal bath or other treatment administered during this" (OED)? There is a sense that Obama had healing powers, and yet where was all the healing? Why did Obama lead to Trump? It's a strange mystery!

The link on "is most likely Mike Love" goes to "Mike Love to Trump: ‘You Tried Your Best to Help Whitney Houston’/You’ve always been a big supporter of some of the best music that America has ever made,' Beach Boys singer told president" (Rolling Stone, October 2018). Love was at the White House for Trump's signing of the Music Modernization Act, which aimed to protect the rights of artists in digital media.

I love the idea that loving Love is "another impeachable offense." It underscores Trump's characterization of impeachment as "Impeachment Lite." Everybody's doing it, defining impeachment downward. It seems peachier than ever. And now, we're adding Love.

I note that Ruttenberg did not say Trump's favorite musical act is The Beach Boys. He only said that Trump's favorite Beach Boy is probably Mike Love. If you pay attention at all to Trump's rallies, you would conclude that Trump's favorite music act is The Rolling Stones. Not only does he always end with "You Can't Always Get What You Want,"* the pre-speech song list of perhaps 22 songs may have 3 Rolling Stones songs — "Time Is on My Side," "Let’s Spend the Night Together," and "Sympathy for the Devil" — while having no repetitions from other artists, with exactly one exception, Elton John.

Hey, it's Christmas, so I feel I should say something Christmas-y... and that got me wondering whether it's true — as my instinct tells me — that The Rolling Stones have a never done a Christmas song. According to Showbiz Cheatsheet, I am right about that, but they did do this “Cosmic Christmas” in "a hidden coda" on "Their Satanic Majesties Request":



And their song "Winter" has this line: "And I wish I been out in California/When the lights on all the Christmas trees went out/But I been burning my bell, book and candle/And the restoration plays have all gone around."

And Mick Jagger, sans other Stones, recorded “Lonely Without You (This Christmas)." And before you say, But Keith Richards wouldn't do something like that, he recorded "Run Rudolph Run" in 1979.

Now, go slather yourself in balm and get some strange flickers of a merry Christmas!

______________________

* You know what I think about that. I wrote last year:

To me, this message, played at the end of a political rally, feels like a critique of all politics. Yes, I've stood here and promised the sky, but you must realize you might not get it, and what you do get may even be preferable. You're feeling your wants, and I'm stoking your wants, but I might have something else in mind, something that I think is good enough for you or actually better than what you want. And you really shouldn't be taking those drugs and drinking that wine or even drinking that soda. What kind of a thinking adult are you anyway, preferring "cherry red" soda? Grow up. You've had your fun at my rousing rally. Now, straighten up and try to see what you're getting as all you really need.

The dawn run in the 35° rain.

1. A little colder — with snow — would be warmer — emotionally — but I celebrate diversity — not just in human beings but in the inanimate aspects of nature.



2. It's built into this sunrise running project that some days will have more brilliance and pleasing comfort. You've got to value the full range, perhaps think of a morning like this in terms of "subtle nuance." I put that in quotes not for sarcasm but because I thought of the phrase at the time — I'm quoting my brain — and "subtle nuance" really did help me enjoy the experience. I thought of the analogy to human personalities: Today is an introvert.

3. My AirPods were dead, so I had to run — not in silence — in the sound — the subtle nuance sound — of nature. The raindrops were tiny and soundless. A little rustling wind. Some duck quacking. I think of the music as giving energy, making the run easier, but oddly enough, it was easier without the podded-in music. There was a mindless, timeless feeling. The songs mark out time and they have words that release old memories and draw me into elaborate ideas.

4. There was the sound of conversation — some, not all of the time. I mentioned the idea you see there in point #3, and Meade said something that made me say, "Thoughts meander like a restless wind..."

5. And then there was the sound of singing, not me, but Meade, not "Across the Universe," but "And I'm proud to be an American/Where at least I know I'm free/And I won't forget the men who died/Who gave that right to me...." I said, "Oh, no, you're going to blow my cover," meaning: Remember where you are and be discreet. In fact there was one other runner coming down the path. But don't worry, he said, she's wearing "ear tampons" (i.e., AirPods).

6. If you're going to sing "Proud to be an American," then you ought to sing "You Can't Always Get What You Want." And Meade sang out his version:

I saw her today at the convention
A glass of Miller Lite in her hand
I knew she wanted to make a connection
At her feet was a socialist man
No, you can't always get Bernie Sanders
You can't always get sleepy Joe Biden
You can't always get Kamala Harris or Elizabeth Warren
But if you try sometime, you'll find
You get Donald Trump...

7. No one heard that, no one but me, and we made it back to the car without getting our fair share of abuse.

8. Driving home, we had to stop for turkeys — a dozen turkeys making their way across the road. What are they doing here? Why are they not eaten? I rolled down the car window and congratulated them: "Good work! You made it! Thumbs up!"

9. The turkeys survived Thanksgiving and their mindless crossing of the road, we survived the trip home from the sunrise run, and words are flowing out like endless rain, so I'll stop this list at 9.

Did Trump just call Bret Stephens a bedbug? No, you could "bring in" the infestation without being one of the bugs.

“The infestation of bedbugs at The New York Times office” @OANN was perhaps brought in by lightweight journalist Bret Stephens, a Conservative who does anything that his bosses at the paper tell him to do! He is now quitting Twitter after being called a “bedbug.” Tough guy!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2019

To quote the old Rolling Stones song:

To live in this town you must be tough, tough, tough, tough, tough!
You got rats on the west side
Bedbugs uptown
What a mess this town's in tatters I've been shattered
My brain's been battered, splattered all over Manhattan...

Coming soon... the live-stream of Trump's Orlando rally, where he's expected to announce that he's running for reelection.

It starts in about half an hour, but you can watch the live stream and listen to the music. As I was writing this post, the music was the old Rolling Stones come-on, "Let's Spend the Night Together" ("I've satisfied your every need/And now I know you will satisfy me..." (so apt!)).

"For the last 22 years, The Verve haven't made a penny from Bitter Sweet Symphony, after forfeiting the royalties to The Rolling Stones."

"The song was embroiled in a legal battle shortly after its release, after The Verve sampled an orchestral version of The Stones' song The Last Time. As a result, writer Richard Ashcroft had to sign over his rights to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards - until now. Speaking as he received a lifetime achievement prize at the Ivor Novello Awards, Ashcroft announced: 'As of last month, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards signed over all their publishing for Bitter Sweet Symphony, which was a truly kind and magnanimous thing for them to do.' Ashcroft acknowledged that it was the Rolling Stones' late manager, Allen Klein, who had been responsible for the situation, rather than the musicians themselves," BBC reports. The Verve sought permission and agreed to pay the Stones 50% of the royalties, but the agreement was to use a 5-note part of the recording, and they used more than that, voiding the agreement, and, under the management of Allen Klein — you remember Allen Klein — there was a lawsuit and The Verve lost all the royalties.

Here's "Bitter Sweet Symphony":



Here's the symphonic version of "The Last Time" (from 1965), which I don't think I'd ever noticed before:



And here are the Stones doing "The Last Time" (I'm giving you the Ed Sullivan performance, in which Keith Richards doesn't seem to play the guitar so well):

This morning, I'm googling I hate that head exploding gesture because...

... I saw a TV commercial last night in which 2 characters did the gesture over and over and I realized that it has really gone too far and I really hate it. I wish I could find the commercial for you (maybe it's somewhere in the hours of Milwaukee-related sports events that I saw out of the corner of my eye last night and conceivably could scroll through on the DVR).

You know the gesture I'm talking about? If you google for it, the first thing you'll find is probably this:



Now that is clipped from this...



... which I found through the wonderfully helpful Know Your Meme site. It has an article "Mind = Blown."

The phrase “mind blown” has been used to express shock and bewilderment since as early as 1996 with the inclusion of a song titled "mind blown" in N.W.A rapper MC Ren's second solo album The Villain in Black. By 1997, the phrase had found its way into online vernacular, as evidently used in the title of a post on the Usenet group alt.fan.david-bowie to describe the poster’s reaction to seeing David Bowie perform live.

Of course, people were saying that blew my mind and so forth for decades. It was already so widely in use by 1969 that The Rolling Stones could use it in a joke (in "Honky Tonk Women").



And, yes, I know that 50 years later, Mick is still dancing...

pic.twitter.com/nx5JFB2ZuJ

— Mick Jagger (@MickJagger) May 15, 2019

But back to the subject. "Mind = blown" became a stock form of expression on the internet, but what about the gesture?

On April 19th, 2010, the /r/MindBlown subreddit was created to share awe-inspiring images and videos. As of August 2013, it has accrued more than 430 readers. On July 9th, 2010, a thread for "mind blowing" images thread was created on the New Schoolers forums, where it accrued nearly 70 pages over three years. As early as May 2011, the phrase became associated with a reaction GIF of a clip from the Adult Swim series Tim and Eric's Awesome Show (shown [above])....

Additional images, including both reaction GIFs and those meant to evoke a "mind blown" response, can be found with the hashtag #mindblown on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Tumblr.

Is it enough of a cliché yet? It's used profusely in an ad. Doesn't that mean it's time to stop?

I don't mind people writing "mind blown" or "mind = blown." I'm just annoyed by the gesture, which I'm seeing in completely nonhip advertisements. Maybe you can do it ironically, acknowledging its overuse and abject squareness, and maybe I'm giving it new power — the power to annoy — by writing this.

Here are lots of GIFs doing the gesture, in case you want access to the cool trend of annoying me.


via GIPHY

ADDED: The OED traces the underlying idea — blowing a mind — back to 1966, but in a way that strongly suggests the expression was already current:

24. j. to blow (a person's) mind, to induce hallucinatory experiences (in a person) by means of drugs, esp. LSD; hence transferred, to produce (in a person) a pleasurable (or shocking) sensation.

[1966 San Francisco Examiner & Chron. 12 June 33/3 The Barry Goldberg Blues Band..does an LP called ‘Blowin' My Mind’.]
1967 San Francisco Examiner 12 Sept. 26/3 On a hip acid (LSD) trip you can blow your mind sky-high.
1967 San Francisco Chron. 2 Oct. 49/3 Because when the Red Sox rallied to beat the Minneapolis Twins..Boston fans blew their minds....

This is blowing my mind:



Here, you can buy the album "Blowing My Mind" at Amazon, where one reviewer says:

The best track is "Blowing My Mind," with catchy chord changes and decent lyrics, but Goldberg sings it like he's soaping his pits in the shower.

"Yeah, we can practice in my parents' garage, but we got to play the songs I want to play. OK? So who knows 96 Tears by Question Mark and the Mysterians? Anybody? No? Anybody know She's About A Mover by the Sir Douglas Quintet? Alright, Hang On Sloopy it is. Ah 1, ah 2...."