FEATURE:
In the Stars
Why The Rolling Stones’ Foreign Tongues Is Such an Exciting and Important Album
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I guess a band…
IN THIS PHOTO: The Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger, Ronnie Wood, and Keith Richards joined Conan O’Brien during the exclusive launch event of their new album, Foreign Tongues, at Weylin on 5th May, 2026 in Brooklyn, NY/PHOTO CREDIT: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for UMG
like The Rolling Stones can command a pretty impressive guestlist when it comes to a new album. Before getting there, I want to touch on something that I raised when writing about Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. Two Beatles legends in their eighties releasing albums so close to one another. How we are so privileged to live in a time when this is happening. Both artists might not release too many other albums, which makes their latest albums – Ringo Starr’s Long Long Road and Paul McCartney’s The Boys of Dungeon Lane -, so important. How they are still so close and Starr appears on a track from the McCartney album. We also have the honour of seeing Paul Simon take to the stage and still in heart-stopping form. Perhaps this will be the final album from The Rolling Stones and they may tour this one and then wind down. However, you hope that they make more music, as anything we get from these music legends is a real blessing. Foreign Tongues will be out on 10th July. As exciting as it is to see Paul McCartney host an intimate evening at Abbey Road Studios, and his genius still out there in the world, the endurance of The Rolling Stones is a real mind-blowing thing. How they have been playing together over sixty years and they are still together. Band members have left or sadly passed on, yet the focal point of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards remains. Foreign Tongues, when reading that title, seems like it will react to anti-immigration sentiment or it will have a political edge. I am really excited to see what comes from it. I feel their twenty-fifth studio album will be hugely well received. 2023 ‘s Hackney Diamonds got a lot of four-star reviews, it won the award for Best Rock Album at the 67th Annual Grammy Awards, and it was an album that saw collaborations with Lady Gaga and Elton John (among others). One of the collaborators, Paul McCartney, also features on Foreign Tongues.
Although the band are on a great run and seem so excited for their new album, you get the feeling that it may be a full stop or one of their last offerings. On Angry, we see actress Sydney Sweeny in the video. She hit back at claims she was objectified. I feel it was the band hiring this amazingly cool and compelling person to add something vivacious, free and mesmeric. Rather than anything lurid. I believe the music video for In the Stars will feature actress Odessa A'zion. I am excited to see that. As great as it is to welcome and support new artists and those who have been around for a few years, there is something extra special regarding legacy artists and those who have played for decades. Not only because of how long their careers have lasted, but because they adapt and succeed at a very different time. One that is perhaps very strange compared to what it was like when they started. It is not easy to appeal to the existing fanbase and also connected with a newer, younger generation. Artists like The Rolling Stones do. I will move on, though I want to drop in this NME featured, where the band joined Conan O’Brien on stage in N.Y.C. to talk about Foreign Tongues and people they worked with on the album:
“The Rolling Stones rang in their new album era at the historic Weylin in Brooklyn, New York City, to open up about their new record ‘Foreign Tongues’ at a rollicking album launch event last night (Tuesday May 5).
Just a few hours after announcing their latest LP ‘Foreign Tongues‘, set for release on July 10, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood spoke with host, comedian Conan O’Brien to discuss collaborating with The Cure‘s Robert Smith and The Beatles legend Paul McCartney, their late drummer Charlie Watts being featured on the album, and how they continue to push their musicality after more than 60 years.
O’Brien introduced the band to the audience of media members and VIPs after a quick quip on the follow-up to 2023’s ‘Hackney Diamonds‘ being the album that would finally “kick them into high gear after years of toiling and obscurity”.
The former Late Night host and longtime Stones fan applauded the band for their “spectacular” and “brilliant” album, before asking Jagger how his voice seemed to have gotten better over the years, to which he cracked back: “I was taking a lot of drugs back in 1968 I wasn’t taking this album.”
The band discussed the diversity of sound on their new album and a country track called ‘Ringing Hollow’. “Keith and I, when we were really young, we both liked country music a lot,” Jagger shared. “We would play it, we’d always liked Hank Williams. You can’t really imitate those people, but we absorbed that style. ‘Ringing Hollow’, which is a love song to America, I didn’t want to express it in a rock way. I thought it was better that we did it in a country way.”
O’Brien also talked to the band about how their approach to pushing their creativity and ambition has changed over the last six decades. “You guys are the greatest rock band in the history of the world. When you listen to these tracks, you’re playing like you have something to prove. There’s an urgency to it, an immediacy to it, an energy to it that’s really stunning,” O’Brien said.
“I love a challenge. That’s the whole album, the challenge of raising the bar. We’ve always been ambitious,” Jagger responded. “The thing about this record that I find interesting. And you say, ‘You’ve got nothing to prove,’ but The Stones is a rock band, but The Stones also has the ability to do ballads and country music and dance music, they run in the gamut of all these styles. We’re not stuck in one particular style; over the years, we’ve loved all kinds of music. So, we express that in the way we record and what songs we write.”
Richards added: “It’s quite possible that there’s more in there. And that’s what we’re looking for.”
They recorded all of the new songs for ‘Foreign Tongues’ in less than a month at Metropolis Studios in West London. Grammy-award-winning producer Andrew Watt, who worked with them on their previous album and who Richards described as their “referee”, was once again tapped for his modern meets classic rock approach.
‘Foreign Tongues,’ also features a legendary list of guests, including Paul McCartney, Steve Winwood, Robert Smith, and Red Hot Chili Peppers‘ drummer Chad Smith.
“We did a session with Paul on the last album, and this is a track from those sessions,” Jagger said, noting that the LP is made up of 10 new tracks recorded in London and four from previous sessions. When O’Brien asked if there were collaborators who felt intimidated to work with The Stones, Jagger replied: “With Paul, he really wanted to jump in there. He was next door in the studio.”
Wood joined in, joking, “There was no intimidation with Paul. He just wanted to play with the band; he wanted to tick that box. He was like, ‘Finally, I can say I played with The Rolling Stones’.”
Jagger also shared an anecdote on working with Robert Smith. “He was standing there with his back to me and this long gown on and when he turned around, he was covered in lipstick. And I said, I never met him before, ‘You’re Robert Smith of The Cure’. And he said, ‘Yeah, we’ve never met’. And I said, ‘While you’re here, you better go and do something’. That’s how collaborations work sometimes,” he smiled.
This comes after Smith said that he tried to book McCartney and The Stones for his curated Meltdown Festival at London’s Southbank in 2018, but they were unavailable.
Wood praised Winwood’s contribution to the album, before the band acknowledged an unreleased track, ‘Hit Me In The Head’, which features Watts drumming during one of his final recording sessions before passing in 2021. “We did that in Los Angeles with Charlie, and it’s real fast, like a punk rocker,” Jagger said of the track. “It’s a super fast song.”
O’Brien also asked the band if, at this stage in their career, they still see the album-making process as fun. “Yes, we’re having fun most of the time. A lot of times, you have to concentrate and make those five minutes really count. It’s a lot of fun, but it’s a lot of concentration,” Jagger said. “We did have a lot of fun. It’s not a long, drawn-out process. Four weeks is four weeks. We used to spend months and months in the studio and never leave.”
The Rolling Stones also shared the new single ‘In The Stars’ yesterday, before closing the moderated portion of the NYC event with a preview of the music video – featuring a younger version of the band and actress Odessa A’zion, who was in attendance and danced along as the track played.
Nathaniel Mary Quin, the New York artist who painted the album’s artwork, was also in attendance and spoke about bringing the piece to life. The band also played the previously shared ‘Rough And Twisted’ (released on vinyl only as The Cockroaches) along with unreleased songs ‘Mr. Charm’ and ‘Jealous Lover’”.
Even if you think new singles, In the Stars, and Rough and Twisted are perhaps not to the standard of Hackney Diamonds of The Rolling Stones’ best, I do feel like they have a lot of the edge, energy and brilliance they always have. Foreign Tongues is going to be one of the albums of the summer. Not only because it will be brilliant and you can tell the band still love recording together. I also feel like it may be a final chapter. Or a moment where they pause. After tour dates for Foreign Tongues, where do The Rolling Stones go? It seems inconceivable they will retire. I feel like they will keep playing until they drop. But what about recording more music? I do really hope there is more from them. This incredible year when a few truly iconic artists who have been performing and recording since the 1960s – or the 1950s in the case of Paul McCartney – are releasing new music and Also collaborating with one another. It is this incredible joy! Will we see it again in 2027? I feel this year might be unique in that sense. Madonna releasing a new album too. It is quite emotional hearing The Rolling Stones now. I grew up listening to them and could not conceive they would be recording music in 2026! Who knows what the near future holds for The Rolling Stones. If their twenty-fifth studio album will be their final one. If it is, then it is a really amazing way…
TO sign off.