Credit: JRoseMick Jagger was interviewed by Apple Music’s Zane Lowe this week, and shared some details about The Rolling Stones‘ brand-new song, the coronavirus-inspired “Living in a Ghost Town,” which was released Thursday.
The band started working on the reggae-flavored tune more than a year ago, and, as Jagger explained, when he and Keith Richards decided that they wanted to release the song now, the lyrics had to be tweaked a bit to reflect life during the pandemic.
“I said [to Keith], ‘Well, I’ve got to rewrite it, because…some of it is not gonna work,'” he noted. “Some of it was a little bit weird and a bit too dark.”
Having said that, Jagger noted that he “didn’t have to rewrite [the lyrics] very much.”
Mick explained, “[I]t was just one of those odd things. It was written about being in a place which was full of life and then now is all…bereft of life.”
Meanwhile, Jagger reported that the next Stones album, which will be the band’s first collection of new original songs since 2005’s A Bigger Bang, likely won’t be ready for quite some time.
“[I]t’s so long ago [since the last album that] you want [the new one] to be really good,” he maintained. “I want it to be great…So, I mean, we’ve been recording and we’ve got some really good stuff…but…don’t hold your breath.”
Jagger also responded to Paul McCartney‘s recent comments about The Beatles being a better band than The Rolling Stones.
Mick declared that there was “no competition” between the bands, then pointed out that the difference was that The Beatles broke up before the start of the major modern touring industry, while The Stones have been playing arenas and stadiums for decades.
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