The Rolling Stones have dropped their first original song in eight years with the sudden, out-of-nowhere release of the new track, “Living In A Ghost Town.” Mick Jagger spoke about the song to Apple Music, and revealed he and Keith Richards wrote the tune over a year ago, explaining, “It wasn’t written for now, but it was just one of those odd things. It was written about being in a place, which was full of life but is now bereft of life so to speak. I was just jamming on the guitar and wrote it really quickly in like 10 minutes.”
He added, “Keith and I both had the idea that we should release it. But I said, 'Well I’ve got to rewrite it.' Some of it is not going to work and some of it was a bit weird and a bit too dark. So I slightly rewrote it. I didn’t have to rewrite very much, to be honest. It’s very much how I originally did it.”
Keith Richards revealed the band had recorded the new track in L.A. back in early-2019: “It’s sort of eerie when suddenly it’s coming to life. I mean the ghost comes to life. I had said to Don (Was) about a month or so ago, ‘Hey, this is a time for the ghost town track.’ And then Mick called me and said the same thing and that great minds think alike. . . Obviously right now we’ve got nothing else to do but write some more songs, right?”