The Rolling Stones’ new single gets mixed reaction from critics: ‘Rushed and half-baked’

Single marks the band's first original material since 2012

Critics are reacting to The Rolling Stones’ first original music in eight years, the single “Living in a Ghost Town”.

Mick Jagger had previously revealed the band were recording new material before the coronavirus lockdown was put in place.

He said there was one song they thought would “resonate through the times that we’re living in right now. We’ve worked on it in isolation. And here it is”.

“We cut this track well over a year ago in LA for a new album, an ongoing thing, and then s**t hit the fan,” Keith Richards said. “Mick and I decided this one really needed to go to work right now and so here you have it.”

Lyrics include the lines: “Preachers were all preaching/ Charities beseeching/ Politicians dealing/ Thieves were happy stealing/ Widows were all weeping/ There’s no beds left for us to sleep in/ Always had the feeling/ It would all come tumbling down.”

A Guardian review gave the song four stars and hailed it as The Rolling Stones’ “best in years”, praising it for its “appealingly sleazy” sound, “as befits a song in which Mick Jagger complains, very Jaggerishly, that social distancing is preventing him having as much sex as he’d like”.

An NME review by Mark Beaumont, who also writes for The Independent, was less positive.

“Living In A Ghost Town”, despite being The Stones’ first original song since 2012, is a… rushed and half-baked comment on our current predicament,” the review says. “Aiming at The Specials’ ‘Ghost Town’ and ending up like a deep bluesy take on Hard-Fi’s ‘Cash Machine’, it finds Jagger tremulous, forlorn and a little angry that humanity is no longer free to amass at his electrified gates.”

Jagger said he originally wrote the song in 10 minutes, but made minor rewrites in the wake of the coronavirus crisis.

The Rolling Stones got together (virtually) for a performance of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” during the One World: Together at Home concert organised by Lady Gaga, Global Citizen and the World Health Organisation.

Read our review of the event here.