Rolling Stones Announce New Album ‘Foreign Tongues,’ featuring McCartney, Winwood, and others

The band’s 25th studio album was recorded in under a month at Metropolis Studios in west London and features an all-star cast of guests.

The Rolling Stones have announced Foreign Tongues, their 25th studio album, set for release on July 10 via Polydor/Universal Music. Produced by Andrew Watt, who helmed the band’s previous record Hackney Diamonds, the album was recorded in less than one month at Metropolis Studios in west London and features guest appearances by Paul McCartney, Robert Smith of The Cure, and Steve Winwood, among others.

Foreign Tongues: What We Know About the New Record

Mick Jagger offered a candid look at the sessions in a statement accompanying the announcement. “I love doing these recording sessions in London at Metropolis,” Jagger said. “It was a very intense few weeks recording Foreign Tongues. We had 14 great tracks and we went as fast as we could. I like the room there as it’s not too big so you can feel the passion in the room from everyone.”

Two tracks from the album are now in the public domain ahead of the July 10 release date, arriving in very different fashions and offering an early sense of the record’s range.

The Two Released Tracks: In The Stars and Rough and Twisted

The album’s first official single, In The Stars, is out now. It marks the band’s formal introduction of Foreign Tongues to the public and is available across streaming platforms.

The Stones had already offered an earlier, deliberately low-key preview of the project on April 11, when they released a track called Rough and Twisted as a strictly limited vinyl-only white label release. That release was credited to The Cockroaches, a name the band has used in the past when playing secret shows, and the credit served as a knowing nod to the group’s legendary longevity. The approach was a classic piece of Stones mystique: a physical-only, pseudonymous drop designed to reward the attentive rather than chase the algorithm.

Andrew Watt Returns as Producer

Watt’s return to the producer’s chair is a significant continuity point. His work on Hackney Diamonds in 2023 marked the Stones’ first album of original material in nearly two decades and was widely praised for capturing the band’s live energy in a studio setting. Bringing him back for Foreign Tongues suggests the group found a working chemistry worth repeating, and the compressed recording timeline at Metropolis appears to have been a deliberate creative choice rather than a logistical constraint.

The guest list adds considerable weight to the project. McCartney, Smith, and Winwood each represent distinct corners of rock history, and their presence alongside Jagger, Keith Richards, and Ronnie Wood points to a record with genuine range. The Stones have a long tradition of enlisting outside collaborators, from Nicky Hopkins and Billy Preston in the classic era to Lady Gaga and Elton John on Hackney Diamonds.

No Tour Planned, Band Will Play on Their Own Terms

Fans hoping for a supporting tour will need to be patient. At present, there are no live shows planned to accompany the album release. A spokesman for the band told The Times: “The Rolling Stones will play when they decide to, not before.”

That posture is consistent with how the band has operated since the death of drummer Charlie Watts in 2021. The Stones have continued to perform selectively, with Steve Jordan stepping in on drums, but they have resisted committing to the kind of extended touring schedules that defined earlier decades of their career.

Foreign Tongues is available for pre-order now.

What we know

• Foreign Tongues is the Rolling Stones’ 25th studio album and will be released on July 10 via Polydor/Universal Music.
• The album was produced by Andrew Watt, who also produced the band’s previous album Hackney Diamonds.
• It was recorded in less than one month at Metropolis Studios in west London.
• Guest appearances on the album include Paul McCartney, Robert Smith from The Cure, and Steve Winwood, among others.
• The album’s first official single is called In The Stars and is currently available.
• On April 11, the Stones released a track called Rough and Twisted as a strictly limited vinyl-only white label release credited to The Cockroaches.
• Mick Jagger stated the sessions produced 14 tracks and that the band recorded as fast as they could.
• A band spokesman told The Times there are currently no live shows planned and that the Stones will play when they decide to.

The take

Andrew Watt has become one of rock’s most in-demand producers precisely because he understands how to make legacy acts sound vital rather than preserved. His work with Ozzy Osbourne on Ordinary Man and Patient Number 9 demonstrated a knack for stripping away the museum-piece reverence that can suffocate older artists, and Hackney Diamonds benefited from the same instinct. The fact that Foreign Tongues was cut in under a month at a single London studio reinforces that approach: speed and confinement tend to produce performances, not productions.

The guest roster is worth reading carefully. McCartney, Smith, and Winwood are not cameo names chosen for streaming-era cross-promotion. They are peers and, in McCartney’s case, a genuine contemporary from the same generational moment that produced the Stones themselves. That kind of collaboration tends to push a band toward its strengths rather than toward novelty.

The two released tracks tell an interesting story about how the band is managing the rollout. Rough and Twisted arrived as a vinyl-only white label under a pseudonym, a move aimed squarely at the collector and the curious. In The Stars is the proper single, the version designed for broader consumption. Using both modes of release suggests a campaign that is thinking about more than one kind of listener. With no tour announced, the record will have to stand entirely on its own, which is either a confident statement or a practical acknowledgment of where the band is in its career. Probably both.

Why it matters

For a band now in its seventh decade, Foreign Tongues represents something genuinely unusual: a major studio album recorded quickly, with a prominent producer and a high-caliber guest list, released with no supporting tour attached. The Stones have always been a live band first, so letting a record carry the full weight of their public presence is a meaningful shift. For Classic Rock listeners, it also raises the stakes on the music itself. There is no arena spectacle to soften the reception. The songs will be judged as songs.

What’s next

Two tracks are already available: In The Stars, the official first single, is out now on streaming platforms, and Rough and Twisted was released on April 11 as a limited vinyl-only white label under the name The Cockroaches. Foreign Tongues is set for release on July 10 via Polydor/Universal Music and is currently available for pre-order. No tour dates or live appearances have been announced in connection with the album.

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