The Rolling Stones surprised listeners on Tuesday October 20 with a new single, “Who You Callin' Crazy,” a bright, feel-good cut that opens with Mick Jagger and points straight at the deluxe rollout for “Foreign Tongues.” It is the latest teaser from the extended “Loose Lips” version of the album, which will add five previously unreleased songs when it arrives on November 27 via Polydor/Universal Music.
The release matters because it gives fans a fresh song now, not just a promise of more music later. Jagger sings the opening verse and the track features jazz saxophonist Courtney Pine, giving the song a looser, more upbeat feel than a routine vault clear-out. For listeners following the Stones’ recent run, it also keeps the momentum going after the band set out the “Loose Lips” edition last week and then dropped “Bad Luck Hideaway” on Friday October 16.
That earlier song was not new in the strictest sense: “Bad Luck Hideaway” had already appeared as a bonus track on the iTunes exclusive edition of “Foreign Tongues,” and it was recently made available online as the B-side to “Mr Charm.” Its return, followed by “Who You Callin' Crazy,” shows the deluxe campaign is being built around both genuinely new material and tracks that had been scattered across different releases. The new edition also promises “Where There’s A Will,” “Human Tide” and “She Still Comes Around,” filling out a package that turns “Foreign Tongues” into a wider, more complete version of the band’s 25th full-length album.
There is, though, a familiar mismatch between the music and the road. The Stones have new songs out and Jagger has said this summer that he had “already started writing songs” again, but he also said those songs might be for other people. The band is not currently lined up for live shows, and Keith Richards cannot commit to a full-scale tour, so the immediate future looks more like recording and release planning than a return to the stage.
That leaves the bigger question hanging over the new writing: whether the next batch of songs ends up inside a Rolling Stones project or somewhere else entirely. For now, the answer from the band is on the record and in motion — one surprise single, one deluxe edition, and another sign that Jagger is still writing with more than one destination in mind.
