On Tuesday afternoon in New York, the Rolling Stones gathered friends, journalists and fellow artists for a preview of their forthcoming 25th album, Foreign Tongues.
Before the trio stepped on stage, host Conan O’Brien deadpanned that perhaps, finally, this is the album where the band will “finally make it after decades of obscurity”. The audience, which included Leonardo DiCaprio, director Baz Luhrmann and actor Odessa A’zion, laughed appreciatively.
Seven decades into their career and with more than 250m albums sold, the band hardly need to cement their legacy. But recent years have seen the group – now a three-piece in the wake of drummer Charlie Watts’s death in 2021 – creatively re-energized. Hackney Diamonds, their 2023 album, was praised by the Guardian’s Alexis Petridis as a return to form that “crackles with a sense of purpose”.
On Foreign Tongues, the band once again team up with Hackney Diamonds producer Andrew Watt (Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber), as well as a slew of special guests including Steve Winwood, Paul McCartney, the Cure’s Robert Smith and Chad Smith of Red Hot Chili Peppers.
At the New York event, Mick Jagger said that Foreign Tongues’ 14 songs would span numerous genres: “The thing about this record is – the Stones are a rock band that also has the capacity to do ballads, country music or dance music. So we don’t get stuck in one kind of style.”
“When it’s not working, that’s when we bring in the referee,” said Keith Richards, pointing at Watt, who laughed along. “He kicks us up the arse.”
Jagger described new song Ringing Hollow as a “country tune” inspired by his and Richards’s lifelong love of Hank Williams, while Beautiful Delilah draws from the delta blues. The singer also teased Hit Me in the Head, “a real punk rocker” with parts recorded by Watts before his death.
On stage, the three-piece were in good spirits and spry, with Jagger happy to play along when O’Brien joked that the singer’s striped blazer was “from the estate of Willy Wonka”.
“It kicks ass,” said O’Brien of the new album, adding that it is reminiscent of the band’s 1972 classic Exile on Main St, and that he had listened to the record “25 times” since receiving it a few days ago. “There’s a vibrancy, an urgency to it.”
That’s partly due to the fact that the album was recorded in about a month, said Jagger: “Only having four weeks gave us an urgency. We’re having fun most of the time in the studio, but it’s a lot of concentration too – you’ve really got to make [a song’s] five minutes count.”
When asked how he keeps his octave-spanning singing voice in tip-top shape, Jagger said wryly: “I was taking a lot of drugs in 1968 … so it’s practice.”
“Riffs, you can’t force them,” said Richards. “They come to you.” Meanwhile, guitarist Ronnie Wood compared the interplay with his fellow guitarist to “an ancient form of weaving”.
The cover art for Foreign Tongues is a painting by New York-based artist Nathaniel Mary Quinn, who described the image as an “amalgamation” of the band. “I call it Mr Ugly,” joked Jagger. “It’s not computer-generated,” he added, to whoops and applause from the audience.
The band also reflected on the loss of longtime drummer Watts with affection and humor. “Charlie handed the baton to Steve [Jordan],” said Wood, of the Stones’ new drummer. Richards was more blunt, saying: “When Charlie hit the bucket, he said: ‘Steve’s your man.’”
More than 60 years into their career, the band said that it was important for them to keep things fresh. “You don’t just want to sit on what you’ve done before,” reflected Richards. “We put it together, we love to do it, and there is always something more in there.”
