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I personally think that The Rolling Stones have always been at their best when they’re hungry, when there’s something to prove. After six decades of doing this, you’d think that hunger would fade to a comfortable simmer. Nope, with Foreign Tongues out July 10, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Ronnie Wood have delivered something unexpected: an album that feels genuinely alive, a record that suggests the engine hasn’t just run but is accelerating.
This is only their second album of original material in nearly two decades. Hackney Diamonds came out in 2023, breaking an 18 year silence and winning them a Grammy just this year. That record was confident, lean, built on the blues bedrock that’s always defined them. Foreign Tongues takes a different approach entirely. Where Hackney Diamonds felt like a return to form, this new record feels like exploration.
The Campaign as Art
The marketing campaign alone signals something different. In April, a white label 12 inch appeared in select record shops credited to “The Cockroaches,” a pseudonym the band used back in 1977. The song was called “Rough and Twisted,” and it carried a lyric that gave everything away: “Why don’t you teach me / Teach me all those foreign tongues?” Within weeks, billboards reading “Foreign Tongues” in over twenty languages appeared in cities across the globe. Then came the Nathaniel Mary Quinn painting for the cover, a face that merges three into one, the way Francis Bacon might have painted them. It’s the most thoughtful visual statement they’ve made in thirty years.
Who’s At The Table
What makes Foreign Tongues work is the same thing that always made the Stones work: Jagger and Richards still understand rock and roll as a living conversation, not a museum piece. And this time, they’ve invited people to join that conversation. Paul McCartney appears somewhere on the record, though the band is keeping specifics close. Steve Winwood adds soulful touches. Robert Smith of The Cure shows up as a backing voice. Even Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers is in the mix. The bold move here is that none of these feel forced. The Stones have always been a band that could absorb influence without losing their identity.
What The Singles Tell Us
“In the Stars” hit first as the proper single, and it immediately signals the album’s range. What you hear is pop rock in an early Eighties Stones mode, all Beach Boys harmonies and bright production, Jagger’s voice still capable of that nasty, seductive drawl. It’s not trying to reinvent the wheel. It’s proving that the engine still turns, and turn it does.
But the real statement is “Rough and Twisted.” This is the song that reminds you why anyone ever cared about the Rolling Stones in the first place. Jagger’s harmonica work sits above a rambunctious blues progression, the kind of thing that should feel tired by now but instead feels like three guys who just walked into a room and decided to make some noise. Ronnie Wood’s slide guitar is effortless and menacing all at once. This is the Stones when they’re best: low down, confident, not trying too hard because they don’t have to.
Stylistic Range That Surprises
The curve across the full fourteen tracks is deliberately varied. “Ringing Hollow” moves into country, and Jagger was explicit about this choice. He called it “a love song to America” done in a way that Hank Williams might recognize. It’s a decision that could have been disastrous in the hands of a lesser band, but the Stones have always understood that rock and roll was born from country and blues mixed together. It sits naturally here and works quite well.
Then there are the covers. Amy Winehouse’s “You Know I’m No Good” from her 2006 masterpiece Back to Black could have been a disaster. Instead, the Stones have found something in that song that speaks to them. It’s soulful without being reverential, and Jagger’s voice brings a particular gravity to it. The song closes with Chuck Berry’s “Beautiful Delilah,” a track they first recorded back in 1964 on their UK debut. Sixty two years later and they’re still thinking about where they came from. That kind of self aware sense of history could be maudlin. Instead it feels earned.
Urgency In The Studio
The production throughout comes from Andrew Watt, who won a Grammy for his work on Hackney Diamonds and returns here for what Jagger describes as “a very intense few weeks” at Metropolis Studios in London. The whole thing was tracked in under a month. You can hear that urgency. These aren’t laboriously constructed pieces. They’re songs that breathe, that feel like first takes even when they clearly aren’t. Ronnie Wood mentioned in interviews that sometimes they nailed things in one go, and you believe him when you hear it. There’s no overthinking here, just the sound of a band that still knows how to play together.
“Some of Us” hands the lead vocal entirely to Keith Richards, which is exactly where you want him. Richards’ voice has never been a traditional instrument, and it never needed to be. He brings something darker, something more knowing to a song like this. His age shows not as a limitation but as earned authority. He sounds like a man who’s seen everything and survived it all.
Not A Goodbye
What’s remarkable about Foreign Tongues is that it resists the easy narrative. Everyone wants to call this a farewell album, a final statement. The band hasn’t done anything to encourage that reading. They’ve said there are at least ten more songs written. Keith refused to commit to a tour because of his arthritis, not because he’s done. Jagger made it clear he’d tour tomorrow if he could. This doesn’t sound like goodbye. It sounds like they’ve got somewhere still to go.
The deepfake video for “In the Stars” has divided people online, with fans split on whether seeing them rendered as their 1970s selves is a fun exercise or creepy in a way that undermines the point. Fair criticism either way. But it also reflects something true about this band: they’re not above playing with technology, with ideas, with what rock and roll can be now that they’re in their eighties. They’re still curious. That curiosity is worth something.
Why This Matters
By the time you get to “Back in Your Life,” the longest track at just over six minutes, you’re deep into what makes this record work. It’s not a perfect album. No Stones album has been since Some Girls, and that was nearly fifty years ago. But it’s an album that sounds like people who still care about the work, who understand that rock and roll is meant to swing and move and take chances.
Foreign Tongues won’t bring anyone new to the Stones. It won’t convince skeptics. But for everyone who’s ever understood why these three men have mattered for six decades, it’s proof that the thing that made them matter in the first place is still there. The swagger, the blues, the refusal to play it safe, the understanding that you can do country and pop and soul and still be the Rolling Stones. That’s not nothing. That’s everything.
Listen To “Foreign Tongues” by The Rolling Stones
He discovered the gem when he was 12 years old and still has it now, claiming it to be why he fell in love with music. He likes to play disc golf when he's not writing about music. He is a one-of-a-kind individual who is always the first to bust out his air guitar on the dance-floor.
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