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The Rolling Stones will release their 25th studio album, Foreign Tongues, next month, and somewhat unusually for the band, it features a political message about the social and political climate in modern-day America.
Mick Jagger's lyrical reflection on America 2026 comes mid-way through the album on a song titled Ringing Hollow, which is both a love letter to the country Jagger and Keith Richards fell in love with as teenagers, and a lament for what the US has come in recent years. “Lady Liberty don’t look so good when there’s a tear in her gown," Jagger sings at one point.
"It’s about America as an idea," Jagger tells MOJO magazines’s Will Hodgkinson in an exclusive new interview. "The American Dream is intact for some people, and I’m sure we can find some wonderful immigrant stories that happened in the last 12 months, but we read about the decline of the American Empire. Is the Iran war America’s Suez moment? Well, it’s not the same at all, but there are a lot of questions about imperial overreach, and the lobbying system. The money spent on an election is absurd – it’s not corruption per se but unnecessary. Is it indicative of this administration, or is it something has been happening a long time? In any case, it’s not the same place as it was."
"I lived in New York for 19 years," Jagger adds. "I’ve seen lots of America that no Americans have seen."
"I take Ringing Hollow to be about America when we were growing up in the ’50s," Keith Richards tells MOJO. "The romance of it all: have a cocktail, smoke your cigarettes, play your jukeboxes. We were 14, 15 years old, dying for more black music from America, and slowly you go through the rock’n’rollers and realise that these cats all learned from Muddy Waters. Even now, if I’m stuck for an idea I’ll go back to the blues because the musical form is limited and that makes it all the more intriguing. You’re telling me you can get more out of this thing? Ringing Hollow is our way of saying: we love you."
Recorded at Metropolis Studios in London, Foreign Tongues, like its predecessor Hackney Diamonds, was produced by Andrew Watt (Ozzy Osbourne, Pearl Jam). It features cameo appearances by Paul McCartney, Robert Smith from The Cure, Steve Winwood and more. The album will be released on July 10 via Polydor/Universal Music
Read Classic Rock's review of the record here.
