Rolling Stones announce first studio album in 18 years

The Rolling Stones have announced they are about to release their first album of original material in 18 years, since 2005’s A Bigger Bang.

Titled Hackney Diamonds, the album will be released at an event in East London’s Hackney district on Wednesday (local time).

At the same time, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood will be interviewed live by The Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon.

The event will be live-streamed on YouTube at 2.30pm in London (Wednesday at 11.30pm AEST).

“Hackney may be at the heart of Hackney Diamonds but this is a truly global moment we want to share with fans around the world via YouTube,” the Rolling Stones said in a statement.

The announcement of Hackney Diamonds follows a cryptic teaser campaign in which the band’s iconic mouth and tongue logo was projected onto the façade of major landmarks in cities around the world, including New York, London and Paris.

The album is also the Stones’ first since the death of drummer Charlie Watts in 2021.

Despite the gap between albums, the three remaining Stones have been recording new material for years. At least one song has been reported to feature the two surviving members of the Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.

Hackney Diamonds will likely include several songs Watts recorded prior to his death.

“Let me put it this way,” Richards told the Los Angeles Times in 2021.

“You haven’t heard the last of Charlie Watts.”

He also said the pandemic had delayed work on the album, while Jagger said: “We have a lot of tracks done, so when the tour’s finished, we’ll assess where we are with that and continue.”

-with AAP

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