Pete Byrne's 2001 Cover Of This Rolling Stones Classic Is A Gem Waiting To Be Found

When the Rolling Stones released "Paint It Black" in 1966, it was a defining moment of their career; the song was a breach into psychedelic rock with a signature sound not yet on the market. Though this wasn't the first Stones hit, it did become a massive one, reaching No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 soon after its release and becoming the top hit on June 10, 1966. Decades later, new wave and synth-pop artist Pete Byrne released his own version of this classic Stones song. The original is a wildly popular and lasting part of the Rolling Stones' legacy, and the 1966 rock hit sounds even cooler today. Byrne's cover, however, is an underappreciated gem still waiting to be discovered by a wider range of listeners.

Byrne is best known for being a founder and vocalist of the Naked Eyes, who reached the height of their fame in the early '80s with hits such as "Always Something There to Remind Me" and "Promises, Promises." Unfortunately, the band was only together for a few years before breaking up in 1984. But Byrne didn't stop making music just because the Naked Eyes were finished. Instead, he enjoyed an eclectic career and even worked with musical legends like Stevie Wonder.

In 2001, Byrne dropped his solo album "The Real Illusion." The album never saw mainstream chart success, but it did hide a must-listen cover of "Paint It Black" — a song Byrne truly made his own.

One of the Rolling Stones' most iconic singles of the '60s, Pete Byrne made a wild gamble by turning the psychedelic rock classic "Paint It Black" into an electronic work of art, but the arrangement works. Byrne's version sounds almost like something you could play at a techno-rave as much as it would be at home on a rock playlist.

The song is longer than the original at over four minutes, and yet amid the heavy electronica, it still retains the psychedelic feel the Rolling Stones brought to the tune. It thumps, grooves, and rocks all at once, and the synth style Byrne uses in this track perhaps makes it feel even more psychedelic than the original, in a modern "black light poster" sort of way. It's a super interesting arrangement that deserves to reach more ears than it has.

To illustrate just how hidden this gem is, we'll compare some simple stats (as of late 2026). The Rolling Stones version of "Paint It Black" has 645 million listens on YouTube alone, and The Naked Eyes song "Always Something There to Remind Me" has over 1 million YouTube views. Byrne's Stones cover of "Paint It Black," however, has fewer than 1,500 listens on Spotify and barely over 1,000 on YouTube. But once you hear it, it's a song you're unlikely to forget.