Keith Richards says The Rolling Stones are making new music

It was always unclear if The Rolling Stones would make more music after the tragic death of drummer Charlie Watts, but Keith Richards says he’s been working on new songs with the rest of the band.

During an appearance on CBS Sunday Morning over the weekend, the guitarist revealed that he’d been writing with Mick Jagger and new drummer Steve Jordan, who replaced Watts on tour last year.

“It’ll be interesting to find out the dynamics now that Steve’s in the band,” Richards conceded. “It’s sort of metamorphosing into something else. I was working with Mick last week, and Steve, and we came up with some, eight or nine new pieces of material. Which is overwhelming by our standards… Other times it doesn’t.”

When asked why it’s sometimes hard to conjure new material, the rocker then added, “it’s the muse thing… If I could find her address!”

It’s been a while since The Rolling Stones last properly released new music. 2005’s A Bigger Bang – their 22nd British and 24th American studio album – was their last record of original compositions to date, though a follow-up has long been promised. It was a top five hit in the U.K, U.S., and Australia.

The band’s most recent album, Blue & Lonesome, came out in 2016, but was solely comprised of blues cover songs. It topped the charts in the U.K. and Australia, and reached number four on the U.S. Billboard 200.

Jagger has previously discussed the possibility of a new album. “It sounds good, what we’ve already done,” The Stones’ legendary frontman said back in 2020, while also revealing that they’d “recorded a bunch of tracks” around the same time as the stand-alone single ‘Living in a Ghost Town’.