‘Foreign Tongues’ producer says new Rolling Stones album is ‘rawer and liver and jammier’

By Andrea Dresdale May 27, 2026 | 3:58 PM

The Rolling Stones’ ‘Foreign Tongues’ (Capitol Records)

Andrew Watt produced The Rolling Stones’ well-received 2023 album Hackney Diamonds and the band’s upcoming release, Foreign Tongues. But Watt says he prefers latter, out July 10, because the Stones “never play the same f****** thing the same way twice.”

Watt tells the U.K. paper The Telegraph that for Foreign Tongues, he had the band play live in the studio. “It’s always changing, and then there’s moments where they blow your brains out with how unbelievable and tight it is, and they’re all on it,” he explains. “But part of their magic is that it’s always changing. … [S]o the recording process had to be something where we were going for keeps at all times, so you could capture those moments, moving with the heartbeats of the guys in the room.”

As a result, Watt tells the paper, “I like this one even more [than Hackney Diamonds]. It’s rawer and liver and jammier and wait till you hear the s*** Keith [Richards is] playing. It’s unbelievable.”

Describing the dynamic between Richards and Mick Jagger, Watt says, “You would think two people that have been with each other for as long as they have could read each other’s minds, and there’s times where they do and there’s other times where they go exactly opposite, and it’s those moments where some of the greatest s*** comes out.”

“When they’re recording, they’re almost like fencing a little bit,” he adds. “You know, it’s like this eloquent kind of battle that is occurring.”

“Balancing that whole act and keeping it moving along so you’ve got the take when the magic happens, that is really the main part of the job,” Watt notes. “Really, it’s the most fun thing in the world.”

Watt also produced Paul McCartney’s The Boys of Dungeon Lane.