Mick Jagger was 80 on the Hackney Diamonds tour in 2024, and The Rolling Stones Foreign Tongues now arrives Friday as the band’s 27th studio album. That number says more than nostalgia does: Jagger and Keith Richards are still driving a catalog that has outlived the groups that once made longevity look normal.
Friday is the release date for Foreign Tongues, and it drops into a catalog built over six decades. The Stones’ first U.S. Top 10 hit came in 1964, then the band kept moving through 1970, 1982, 1996 and beyond while other major acts broke apart or cycled out of relevance.
Mick Jagger and Satisfaction
1975 is the sharpest reminder of how far the band has traveled. Jagger told People magazine then, “I’d rather be dead than sing ‘Satisfaction’ at 45.” He was still performing it in concert in 2024 at age 80, which is the sort of contradiction that explains why The Rolling Stones remain a working act instead of a museum piece.
That gap between what Jagger once said and what he kept doing is the business reality behind this album cycle. The group is not selling a memory; it is still issuing new material with the same frontman who once drew a hard line at 45 and crossed it by decades.
Dirty Work to Steel Wheels
Dirty Work sits near the bottom of the catalog for a reason. Its cover shows a sullen, unsmiling band that looks like it would rather be anywhere else, and the music reflects that disinterest. The period nearly broke the group, which is why the later, steadier output matters when judging how much creative life the band still has left.
Undercover of the Night has more bite, with a solid guitar riff and trenchant lyrics about political corruption and violence in South America. Bridges to Babylon has one great song, Saint of Me, and lots of filler, while Steel Wheels is weighed down by dated production and too many songs that make a good first impression but fail to stick.
Exile on Main St. and Black and Blue
Exile on Main St. and Some Girls sit on the other end of the scale. You Got Me Rocking sounds like a throwback to something on Exile on Main St., and Out of Tears echoes Angie; that kind of self-referencing is what a long catalog allows when a band keeps touring, recording, and sorting its own history in public.
Black and Blue became the audition stage after Mick Taylor departed in late 1974, and Ronnie Wood emerged as the replacement after the band tested potential successors. Jagger and Keith Richards remain front and center, which is why a 27th studio album still feels like an operating statement rather than a retrospective package. The next move is simple: Foreign Tongues lands Friday, and the open question is which songs or musical direction it will choose to push forward.
