Sixty-plus years in, expectations for a Rolling Stones record are less about brilliance than survival. On that score alone, Foreign Tongues, the band’s twenty-fifth studio album, already clears the bar.
Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Ronnie Wood sound spry rather than embalmed, with producer Andrew Watt back behind the boards. That’s not nothing, especially at their age.
Still, spry isn’t the same as memorable. And that’s where this one gets complicated.
Watt, who resuscitated Hackney Diamonds in 2023, returns with a familiar formula. Polish the riffs, tuck in some guest stars, and let the Stones sound like the Stones.
“In the Stars” opens the record with genuine muscle, riff-driven and confident. “Rough and Twisted” follows close behind, a blues belter that reminds you this band still knows how to lock into a groove.
“Jealous Lover,” meanwhile, is a nice funky detour into Emotional Rescue falsetto territory. Jagger sounds looser here than he has in years.
Furthermore, the guest list is respectable without feeling like a stunt. Paul McCartney returns on bass, Robert Smith and Steve Winwood drop by, and a Charlie Watts session from 2021 gets its due on “Hit Me in the Head.”
Even Bruno Mars shows up, mostly inaudible, on cowbell. It’s a small touch, but a sweet one.
The band’s chemistry, in other words, is not in question. Fourteen tracks in, nobody sounds unhappy to be there.
However, chemistry isn’t the same as great songwriting, and Foreign Tongues runs into trouble the moment the hooks need to carry weight rather than atmosphere.
Too much of the back half blurs together into competent blues-rock furniture. It’s pleasant in the room, but gone the second it ends.
Here’s the stranger problem, though, one that goes beyond simple staleness. This is billed as new material, genuinely new, occasionally even topical, gesturing at contemporary politics on a track like “Divine Intervention.”
Yet the whole thing plays less like a band writing in 2026 than like a very good cover band doing a loving Stones impression, with the fresh subject matter functioning as scaffolding rather than substance.
It’s uncanny, hearing all the right moves executed by the right hands, and still coming away with the sense you’re watching tribute rather than testimony. Something about it doesn’t seem geared to newcomers.
Sure, nothing here is playing the hits, not exactly. But it sure seems like it’s trying to sound a certain way, as though it is playing around the hits, if that distinction makes any sense at all.
Watt’s production only sharpens that effect. The polish that makes the record radio-friendly also sands off exactly the grit that used to make Stones records feel dangerous, leaving something frictionless where friction used to be the whole point.
Consequently, the two covers, an Amy Winehouse tune and a Chuck Berry number, feel like padding rather than tribute. Neither adds much beyond runtime, and “Back in Your Life” overstays its six-plus minutes without earning them.
None of that sinks the record. It just clarifies who it’s actually for.
This is an album built for oldheads, unapologetically, and for younger listeners who want to feel like oldheads for forty minutes. It’s less interested in winning over a contemporary marketplace than in reassuring an existing one that the old magic, or a very convincing simulation of it, is still available on demand. That’s a fine niche to occupy, but still just a niche all the same.
Foreign Tongues also benefits enormously from arriving in a year when the rest of the industry feels either unusually quiet or slightly off their game. 2024, a standout year where we were practically tripping over good new stuff, is well behind us now.
Ultimately, the album deserves real credit for existing at all, let alone sounding this alive. It’s an admirable, listenable effort from a band with nothing left to prove.
It’s just not one you’ll remember by autumn, more impression than statement. And that’s probably to be expected.
Foreign Tongues is the twenty-fifth studio album by the Rolling Stones, produced by Andrew Watt and released July 10, 2026 via Polydor and Capitol. It’s available now on all major streaming platforms and for physical purchase wherever music is sold.
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Quinn Quē
Quinn Quē is a storyteller & journalist writing regular interviews, reviews, and features. They've been fascinated with the multidisciplinary arts since a child, particularly film, literature, and television. They love microblogging, so feel free to hit them up on Substack Notes or Tumblr about any recent articles or just to shoot the pop culture breeze!