Mick Jagger has named some of his favourite Rolling Stones albums and songs – check out his choices below.
The frontman was asked about the band’s catalogue during a new interview with Today, ahead of the release of the band’s upcoming album ‘Foreign Tongues’.
Asked if he had a favourite Stones album, Jagger replied: “I think ‘Sticky Fingers’ is really good.”
“I think ‘Beggars Banquet’ is really good. I think ‘Hackney Diamonds’ is pretty good, too,” he added.
Jagger also appeared to joke about some of the band’s leaner records, saying: “There’s some Rolling Stones albums that have eight tracks. I mean, you only have eight tracks, and you were like 30 years old? Come on, what were you doing?”
When asked if he had one favourite Rolling Stones song, Jagger answered: “I mean, there’s so many different styles,” he said. “You’re running the gamut of ‘Sympathy For The Devil’, you know, ‘Start Me Up’, ‘Angie’, ‘Honky Tonk Women’.”
Released in 1968, ‘Beggars Banquet’ marked a return to the band’s blues and roots-rock foundations after the psychedelic experimentation of ‘Their Satanic Majesties Request’, and includes ‘Sympathy For The Devil’ and ‘Street Fighting Man’.
‘Sticky Fingers’, released in 1971, was the band’s first album on their own Rolling Stones Records label and featured ‘Brown Sugar’, ‘Wild Horses’, ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knocking’ and ‘Dead Flowers’.
‘Hackney Diamonds’, meanwhile, was released in 2023 and marked the band’s first album of original material in 18 years. It was also their first studio album since the death of drummer Charlie Watts in 2021, although Watts appeared posthumously on two tracks.
The Stones are now preparing to release ‘Foreign Tongues’, their 25th studio album, on July 10 via Polydor/Universal Music. The 14-track record has been produced by Andrew Watt, who also worked on ‘Hackney Diamonds’. Pre-order it here.
It features contributions from Paul McCartney, The Cure’s Robert Smith, Steve Winwood and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, as well as further posthumous appearances from Watts.
The first preview of the album arrived in April when the band shared a bluesy teaser under their old pseudonym The Cockroaches. They later released the singles ‘Rough And Twisted’ and ‘In The Stars’.
Last week, they shared two further singles from the record: the soulful ‘Jealous Lover’ and the rollicking ‘Divine Intervention’, which features Smith on guitar.
Jagger recently explained how the collaboration with Smith came about, saying he unexpectedly saw The Cure frontman in the studio and asked him to contribute.
“There’s this bloke standing there with his back to me with this long gown on,” Jagger recalled. “And when he turned around, he was covered in lipstick. And I said – I’d never met him before – ‘You’re Robert Smith of The Cure!’”
He added: “He said, ‘Yeah!’ And I said, ‘Well, while you’re here then, you better go and do something.’”
The band have also launched an official podcast series, Speaking In Tongues, to accompany the album. The six-part series is narrated by Norah Jones and features new interviews with Jagger, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and Watt.
Jagger has also recently shared his thoughts on modern music, praising Geese for being “very experimental” and Rosalía for her “conceptual” album ‘Lux’, while adding that “loads” of current music is “rubbish”.
Elsewhere, Jagger has said the idea of a Rolling Stones biopic “interests” him, although he admitted it would be difficult to decide which period of the band’s long career to focus on.