Paint It Black: The Rolling Stones’ Dark Hit Built on a Sitar

By Dan Cohen · Published 2026-06-27

Paint It Black, the Rolling Stones’ 1966 hit, is one of the darkest songs ever to top the charts — a headlong descent into grief, depression and the urge to see the whole world drained of color. It doesn’t flirt with darkness; it lives inside it. And it became a massive hit anyway, which says something about how irresistible the band made the despair sound.

The sitar that changed the mood

Its signature is an unlikely one: a sitar, played by Brian Jones, winding its hypnotic, droning line through a rock song. In 1966 that was genuinely strange — few number-one records had ever leaned on an Indian classical instrument — and it gives the track its trance-like, slightly unhinged momentum. The exotic texture turns plain sadness into something feverish and spinning.

Darkness as a hook

Part of the song’s lasting pull is that it never resolves or consoles. It commits fully to the mood of mourning, and that refusal to cheer up is exactly what generations of listeners have found cathartic. Sometimes the most comforting thing a song can do is refuse to pretend you’re fine.

What it measures like

On our scale it’s driving and intense — fast, dark and propulsive, the sitar and the galloping rhythm pushing it forward with a restless urgency. Full profile on its song page.

Paint It Black was released by the Rolling Stones in 1966 (on Aftermath) and featured Brian Jones on sitar. Readings of the lyric are presented as interpretation. No lyrics are reproduced.