Month: September 2023

Here’s Sweet Sound Of Heaven for you

The first recension with a 5 star rating I have seen comes from The Telegraph : “The Rolling Stones, Sweet Sound of Heaven, review: Jagger and Gaga on astonishing, exultant form – Lady Gaga and Stevie Wonder help push the Stones to heights they haven’t reached in decades for this soulful, gospel riposte to old age“

Rolling Stone writes: “Rousing gospel number comes off of upcoming Stones album, Hackney Diamonds“

This here is the lyric video with only 5:07 but let’s see …

Here’s the 7:22 version:

Here’s a 13:04 interview at Apple Music with Mick about SSOH:

From Twitter:

Here’s a short snippet of Sweet Sounds Of Heaven [SSOH]

It’s from Twitter/X and lasts only a few seconds (16).

But then, another short video snippet surfaced from Lady Gaga’s X and it’s slightly longer … 3 seconds longer… so all in all it’s 19 seconds, LOL.

But no reason to be dissappointed – tomorrow is release date for Sweet Sound Of Heaven in all it’s 7:20 glory, hehehe … 🙂

… Oh, and, did you read that article of the Wall Street Journal? That part where the question is raised if the Stones had plans to sell their catalog (post 1971 that is). Mick denied. But then you can read:

Maybe it’ll go to charity one day. “You maybe do some good in the world,” he says.

Woah! That really amazed me!! What do you think?

Just 2 more days until the next single!

The Stones will release “7 Minutes plus  20 Seconds in Sweet Sounds of Heaven – falling down to earth 5PM BST September 28th“.

BST is British Summer Time and corresponds to 6PM in central Europe, 12PM in New York and 9AM in LA.

Time is running fast! Can’t wait!

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal has some recommendable read for us: “How Mick Jagger Has Kept the Rolling Stones in Business for Six Decades“

You can also read it without the paywall at archive.ph …

And another text worth reading is Keith’s interview with The Telegraph – ” ‘I gave up cigarettes in 2019, heroin in 1978, cocaine in 2006… but I still like a drink’ – Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards discusses emerging unscathed from decades of hard living – and why he loves to take the mick out of Jagger“

Mick moves like Jagger – he’s busy traveling, it seems.

Celebrities including Hugh Grant and Mick Jagger were among the list of app. 180 guests and joined King Charles III and Queen Camilla at a banquet at the Palace of Versailles on Wednesday 20 September today.

See for more on this telegraph.co.uk – “Windswept Mick Jagger among celebrities dining with the King and Macron at Versailles state dinner” or thesun.co.uk – “Jagger arrived on the red carpet with partner Melanie Hamrick and waved said ‘wow’ and ‘it’s so windy’ as his scarf blew in his face.” – or the dailymail.co.uk.

The Stones work on a new documentation about the making of Hackney Diamonds!

According to many reports – see for instance guitar.com, nme.com, retropopmagazine.com, blabbermouth.net or check out cbc.ca, where you can listen to an interview (39:21) with Mick:

“We don’t want it to sound like 40 years ago’: Mick Jagger on the Rolling Stones’ new album – The frontman discusses Hackney Diamonds, ‘staying abreast’ of the changing music industry and more“

Here’s a direct link to the podcast “Q with Tom Power” – recommended! 😉

And here’s a 27 minutes version on YT – enjoy!!!

I got that line from a very early back cover text of one the Rolling Stones EPs  (or was is a LP already?)

Anyways;  here is the deal: here are two very very much recommendes reads for you. The first one in technically no problem and just around the corner, so to speak… 

Check out rollingstone.com for the article “How the Rolling Stones Finally Got It Together and Made a Great New Album – Mick, Keith, Ronnie, and Stevie (Wonder, that is) break down the star-packed Hackney Diamonds, an album the Stones only could have made now“

And then, switch over to the NYTimes – (I just crushed the paywall by creating a free account in order to get my hands and eyes on this text – and it’s worth it!) – this article is a must read!!!

“The Rolling Stones on Starting Up Again – The band opens up about how its first album of new songs since 2005, and first since the death of Charlie Watts, recharges the partnership of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.”

Wonderful times these days, folks! We have more good news to enjoy!

One of them is, that we now know, that after Hackney Diamonds, there will be another Stones album on it’s way!

According to noise11.com, who again point towards an interview the Stones gave after the PC, in this case with GB News (or GN News?), Paul McCartney played on more than two songs with them. One of the songs, Bite My Head Off, we already know about the collaboration. But there’s another song not included in the track list of Hackney Diamonds and that song will be published “on the next album“.

That’s not particularly the latest news as the band itself spoke about having recorded 23 songs and Hackney Diamonds features 12 songs. So there are at least 11 songs left for good and from these, the next album will tell us more! In a nutshell: Hackney Diamonds will not be the last Rolling Stones album!

Then, the other good news is that 2 more songs have leaked we can listen to.

One is Depending On You, a ballad – and a beautiful one. It starts with acoustic guitars and Mick singing soulfully about a lost love gone to someone else although he was so ‘depending on you’. After the first chorus, Ronnie adds some nice slide licks and the harmonies just flow about. Yes, the Stones can ballads. This song reminds me a little on Winter, Wild Horses and Moonlight Mile!

The other is Get Close – a rocker. Starting with the rhythm section it just straightforward jumps into your face. There’s a sax solo in the break which sounds like Bobby did this. This song could well come from Mick’s portfolio of ideas, IMHO.

[update] The Rolling Stones get Angry with Roto & AI on the Sunset Strip

 – rollingstone.com too has something to report about the making of Angry…

 – dailymail.co.uk as well looks behind the scenes – but with more emphasis on Sweeny and black leather…

It’s always nice to have a look behind the scenes and hear about all the stuff that went on before we digest the end product.

This time, I can recommend that article of which you have read the title already above. Posted by Mike Seymore, it tells us more about the production and several interesting technical stuff. Here’s a short snip of what VFX Supervisor George Brunt had to say:

“The end result had to look slick, and working with different resolution types is challenging. The devil really is in the detail with this type of work but slick it looks and we love it.”

Head over to fxguide.com and get all the devil’s details!

Some things must have been a bit slippery, because they slipped out and into the net… was it on purpose??? 🙂

… sooner or later it surfaces somewhere. In this case, we owe this to HackneyDiamonds on Insta. Apparently, the next single will be Sweet Sounds Of Heaven and that is, if you recall, that 7:22 piece from the album!

If you check out that picture a little bit more and mirror it, then you can see that this was taken in front of one car repair – Terry’s Ltd – MOT Testing Station in Tottenham… once again: I really did the way they do this campaign!

Thanks to R. who kindly shared the link, there’s an interesting article in Musicweek.

The article was written by Andre Pine and comes with the title “Jewel in the crown: How the Rolling Stones’ catalogue is set to be supercharged by their new album” and it tells us about “key developments on the streaming front for the Stones“.

So, if you please, go over to musicweek.com and have a good read!