Like a lot of 20th-century bands still releasing music in the early part of the 2000s, The Rolling Stones have a problem of inverse longevity: The longer they exist, the less essential their new output is.

That's because Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Ronnie Wood, and the others who passed through did their best work in the first two decades after debuting on American stages on June 5, 1964. Grabbing inspiration from the political and cultural turmoil of the 1960s and early '70s, their dark, politically uncompromising music visited heartfelt longing, raw sexual hunger, a schoolboy love of R&B, and societal decay — often in the same tune.

But since the Stones have only occasionally been noted for their new work, including 2016's stripped-down Blue & Lonesome, it seems only right to revisit their two-dozen studio releases, which have arrived with regularity over the last 55 years.