The Rolling Stones are an English rock band formed in London in 1962. Active across seven decades, they are one of the most popular and enduring bands of the rock era. In the early 1960s, the band pioneered the gritty, rhythmically driven sound that came to define hard rock. Their first stable line-up consisted of vocalist Mick Jagger, guitarist Keith Richards, multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones, bassist Bill Wyman, and drummer Charlie Watts. During their early years, Jones was the primary leader of the band. After Andrew Loog Oldham became the group's manager in 1963, he encouraged them to write their own songs. The Jagger–Richards partnership became the band's primary songwriting and creative force.

The album era was a period in popular music during the latter half of the 20th century in which the physical album was the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption. Usually defined as lasting from the mid-1960s until the mid-2000s, it was driven primarily by three successive music recording formats: the 33⅓ rpm long-playing record (LP), the cassette tape, and the compact disc (CD). Rock musicians from the US and UK were often at the forefront of the era, which is sometimes called the album-rock era in reference to their sphere of influence and activity. The term "album era" is also used to refer to the marketing and aesthetic period surrounding a recording artist's album release.