It is the band's fourth British and sixth American studio album, and closely follows a series of international hit singles that helped bring the Stones newfound wealth and fame rivalling that of their contemporaries the Beatles.

The band's original leader Brian Jones reemerged as a key contributor and experimented with instruments not usually associated with popular music, including the sitar, Appalachian dulcimer, Japanese koto and marimbas, as well as playing guitar and harmonica.

An inaugural release of the album era and a rival to the contemporaneous impact of the Beatles' Rubber Soul (1965), it reflected the youth culture and values of 1960s Swinging London and the burgeoning counterculture while attracting thousands of new fans to the Rolling Stones.

[3] One of Klein's first actions on the band's behalf was to force Decca Records to grant a $1.2 million royalty advance to the group, bringing the members their first signs of financial wealth and allowing them to purchase country houses and new cars.

[10] In 1966, inspired by the formidable women around them, driven by the twin engines of ambition and drugs, the Rolling Stones continued a run of visionary hit singles and began to release albums that stood as crucial works of the era.

[46] Jagger echoes these sentiments in a 1995 interview for Rolling Stone, regarding it as a stylistically diverse work and milestone for him that "finally laid to rest the ghost of having to do these very nice and interesting, no doubt, but still, cover versions of old R&B songs – which we didn't really feel we were doing justice, to be perfectly honest".

[51] Citing individual songs, Rolling Stone describes Aftermath as "an expansive collection of tough riffs ('It's Not Easy') and tougher acoustic blues ('High and Dry'); of zooming psychedelia ('Paint It Black'), baroque-folk gallantry ('I Am Waiting') and epic groove (the eleven minutes of 'Goin' Home')".

[52] Jon Savage also highlights the stylistic diversity of the album, saying that it "range[s] from modern madrigals ('Lady Jane'), music-hall ragas ('Mother's Little Helper'), strange, curse-like dirges ('I Am Waiting') and uptempo pop ('Think') to several bone-dry blues mutations ('High and Dry', 'Flight 505' [and] 'Going Home')".

[53] The first four songs of Aftermath's US edition – "Paint It Black", "Stupid Girl", "Lady Jane" and "Under My Thumb" – are identified by the music academic James Perone as its most explicit attempts to transcend the blues-based rock and roll conventions of the Stones' past.

[57][nb 3] Savage views such songs as evoking "the nastiness of the Rolling Stones' constructed image" in lyrical form by capturing Jagger's antipathy towards Shrimpton, whom he describes as a "feisty upper-middle-class girl who gave as good as she got".

"[55] In Guesdon and Margotin's view, the Stones express a more compassionate attitude towards women in "Mother's Little Helper", which examines a housewife's reliance on pharmaceutical drugs to cope with her daily life, and in "Lady Jane"'s story of romantic courtship.

[65] Referring to the American version of the LP, Perone identifies numerous musical and lyrical features that lend Aftermath a conceptual unity which, although not sufficient for it to be considered a concept album, allows for the record to be understood "as a psychodrama around the theme of love, desire and obsession that never quite turns out right".

[67]According to the music historian Simon Philo, like all the Stones' 1966 releases, Aftermath also reflects the band's "engagement" with Swinging London, a scene in which their decadent image afforded them a pre-eminent role by capturing the meritocratic ideals of youth, looks and wealth over social class.

The band's misgivings about their rock stardom are also touched on, including relentless concert tours in "Goin' Home" and fans who imitate them in "Doncha Bother Me", in which Jagger sings, "The lines around my eyes are protected by copyright law".

[72] Savage views the same lyric, preceded by the lines "All the clubs and the bars / And the little red cars / Not knowing why, but trying to get high", as the Stones' cynical take on Swinging London at a time when the phenomenon was receiving international attention and being presented as a tourist attraction.

[80] Oldham had also proposed the idea of producing a deluxe gatefold featuring six pages of colour photos from the Stones' recent American tour and a cover depicting the band walking atop a California reservoir in the manner of "pop messiahs on the Sea of Galilee", as Davis describes.

[52] In Norman's view, an "aftermath" of the earlier title's "sacrilegious reference to the most spectacular of Christ's miracles" is "the very thing from which their God-fearing bosses may well have saved them", effectively avoiding the international furore that John Lennon created with his remark, in March, that the Beatles are "more popular than Jesus".

[89] Decca issued the album in the United Kingdom on 15 April and an accompanying press release that declared: "We look to Shakespeare and Dickens and Chaucer for accounts of other times in our history, and we feel that tomorrow we will on many occasions look to the gramophone records of the Rolling Stones ... who act as a mirror for today's mind, action and happenings.

[111] Among British critics, Richard Green of Record Mirror, in April 1966, began his review by saying: "Whether they realise it or not – and I think Andrew Oldham does – the Rolling Stones have on their hands the smash LP of the year with Aftermath", adding that it would take much effort to surpass their achievement.

[126] Writing in Esquire in 1967, Robert Christgau said that the Stones' records present the only possible challenge to Rubber Soul's place as "an album that for innovation, tightness and lyrical intelligence" far surpassed any previous work in popular music.

[127] About two years later, in Stereo Review, he included the American Aftermath in his basic rock "library" of 25 albums and attributed the Stones' artistic identity largely to Jagger, "whose power, subtlety and wit are unparalleled in contemporary popular music".

[132][nb 12] With their continued commercial success, the Stones joined the Beatles and the Who as one of the few rock acts who were able to follow their own artistic direction and align themselves with London's elite bohemian scene without alienating the wider youth audience or appearing to compromise their working-class values.

[136] Aftermath follows directly in the wake of the Stones' trilogy of songs based on their American Experience: "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", "Get Off of My Cloud" and "19th Nervous Breakdown", and it establishes that they had gained sufficient confidence in their own writing prowess to present an album of all-original material.

Club, Hyden describes it as "a template for every classic Stones album that came afterward", crediting its "sarcastic, dark and casually shocking" songs with introducing themes Jagger would explore further in the future through a "complex, slippery persona" that allowed him to "be good and evil, man and woman, tough and tender, victim and victimiser".

[45] Schaffner suggests "Goin' Home" anticipated the trend of extended musical improvisations by professional rock bands, while Rob Young of Uncut says it heralded "the approaching psychedelic tide" in the manner of Rubber Soul.

[160] In MusicHound Rock (1999), Greg Kot highlights Jones' "canny" instrumental contributions while identifying Aftermath as the album that transformed the Stones from British blues "traditionalists" into canonical artists of the album-rock era, alongside the Beatles and Bob Dylan.

Reviewing the reissues for Entertainment Weekly, David Browne recommends the UK version over the US, while Tom Moon, in his appraisal in The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), prefers the US edition for its replacement of "Mother's Little Helper" with "Paint It Black" and highlights the clever lyrics of Jagger.

[164][nb 13] Young believes its reputation as a work on-par with Rubber Soul is undeserved since the quality of its songs is inconsistent, the production is "relatively straight" and the assorted stylistic approach ensures it lacks the unifying aspect of the period's other major LPs.

[140] In an article for Clash celebrating Aftermath's 40th anniversary, Simon Harper concedes that its artistic standing alongside the Beatles' contemporaneous works may be debatable but, "as the rebirth of the world's greatest rock and roll band, its importance is undisputed.

"[143] Young infers that the album's principal lyrical theme now evokes a "rather old-fashioned sensation of brattish, spiky misogyny", presenting female characters as "pill-popping housewives ... the idiotic hussy ... the 'obsolete' fashion dummy ... or the subjugated arm candy".