“Dead Flowers” is one of the most pessimistic songs ever written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. In it they describe a relationship in the process of breaking apart between a lugubrious man and a woman for whom everything seems to go right, who has become the queen of the underground.

“Maybe this is the first Goth country song,” suggests Rennie Sparks (of The Handsome Family ).

As presented in many a Rolling Stones song, lyrics and instrumentation are juxtaposed in this number: Jagger tells a rather bleak story set to an optimistic country and western sound.

The Stones started recording “Dead Flowers” on December 15, 1969 – less than ten days after the tragedy of Altamont. For this reason, the song can be seen as a kind of exorcism of the preceding decade’s obsession with hedonistic lifestyles.