A year and a half after releasing two albums considered their very best work, The Rolling Stones delivered a classic that might be better than both of them. Sticky Fingers is a masterpiece of emotional blues rock, the sort of record you feel in your gut.

The best-known songs on Sticky Fingers are opening track ‘Brown Sugar’ and the country rock stunner ‘Wild Horses.’ Also featured are the glorious ‘Sister Morphine’ and ‘Moonlight Mile,’ songs less popular with casual fans but essential for followers of the band.

The Stones tear loose on a trio of blues rock jams — ‘Sway,’ ‘Bitch,’ and ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knocking’ — and deliver a rousing rendition of African American spiritual ‘You Gotta Move.’ And they serve up a country classic in ‘Dead Flowers,’ a song Big Lebowski fans will recognize from that film’s closing scenes (where it is covered by Townes Van Zandt).

Incidentally, has any artist had more songs appear in more great movies than The Rolling Stones? Martin Scorsese and Wes Anderson alone account for a dozen.

That leaves ‘I Got the Blues,’ today’s SOTD, which might be the unheralded best of the bunch. This lovesick lament features a gorgeous Mick Jagger vocal and spine-tingling support by Bobby Keys on saxophone and Billy Preston on the organ. A real treasure.

Even with all that great music, Sticky Fingers is perhaps even better known for its controversial packaging, conceived by pop artist Andy Warhol. The cover features a close-up photo of a man in jeans, his own “packaging” quite prominent. Early pressings of the album included a working zipper, though complaints by record stores and consumers alike led to the release of a flat version.

This album also marked the first appearance of The Stones’ classic lips-and-tongue logo, an iconic image the band would use for the rest of their career.

Sticky Fingers was the first Stones album to reach #1 in both the U.S. and the UK, an achievement they would repeat three more times over the ensuing decade.