On This Day in 1967, The Rolling Stones Released an Album That Critics Called “Cheap” and “Dumb” (But It Still Made the Top 5)

Purists and mainstream markets don’t often see eye to eye. And that was certainly true surrounding the release of The Rolling Stones’ second compilation album, Flowers. The album came out in June 1967, one month after The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. (The Stones’ next album, Their Satanic Majesties Request, is often thought to be their official response to Sgt. Pepper.)

Critical reception of Flowers was lukewarm, to put it nicely. With songs like “Ruby Tuesday”, “Let’s Spend The Night Together”, and “Lady Jane”, the compilation album had plenty of recognizable and well-received Stones tracks. But therein lay the problem for most critics of the day. Robert Christgau had contrasting words about the album, acknowledging Lou Adler and Andrew Loog Oldham’s attempt to “release an acceptable Stones album one month after Sgt. Pepper.” He continued, “They did it by rendering their product invisible.”

“With its dumb cover art…its cheap song selection…and its incongruous use of the already meaningless ‘flower music’ idea (although it did sound at first as if nasty Mick had given up ‘hard rock,’ now didn’t it?) the tendency was to half-dismiss it as another London Records exploitation,” Christgau wrote. Then, the writer offers an alternative explanation. “Only later did we realize how strong and unflowery the new songs were. And only now do we suspect that perhaps Flowers can be construed as a potshot at Sgt. Pepper himself, as if to say, ‘Come off this bulls***, boys. You’re only in it for the money.”

Mainstream Music Markets Had No Qualms With The Rolling Stones’ ‘Flowers’

For Rolling Stones purists who wanted new music on a new album, Flowers was undeniably a letdown. Many of the songs had already been featured on albums like Between The Buttons and Aftermath. The album did have three new songs: “My Girl”, “Ride On, Baby”, and “Sittin’ On A Fence”, which were recorded around the same time as Aftermath.

Leftovers aside, was Flowers the band’s way of selling out? A fair, albeit dismissive, question to ask, but mainstream reception seemed to outweigh the complaints. Flowers peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and broke into the Top 5 in Canada and Finland. Obviously, those who were just interested in listening to The Rolling Stones had no real qualms about how, exactly, they would be able to listen to them. The music was on, and that was just fine.

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