“In The Stars” and “Rough and Twisted” are the two sides of an early morsel -- a vinyl single -- released from the wildly touted new and forthcoming Rolling Stones album. Scheduled to drop on July 10th, these two teasers are from the forthcoming (and interestingly titled) Foreign Tongues -- the full physical studio album. The single in question is out and about. This follows their last album, Hackney Diamonds, released two years earlier. From a wide-angled historical perspective, anything that comes from that long-term rock-and-roll musical juggernaut deserves some attention and careful examination.

“In The Stars” is touted to be the primary commercial magnet, at least from what I’ve read. The song’s open soothing ooo’ing is soft and U2-esque, and continues with U2-inspired background vocalizations alternating with Jagger’s affirmative hollars, interspersed with Richards’ riffs. The lyrics seem to be a thematic roundup of the Stones’ bumpy 60-year longevity and reign. Check this: "Write it in the stars / It’s never gonna fade / Through the rough and twisted / We found a way" and then, along the way, we find this jarring political commentary: “Well, there's a poisonous cloud / there's a sickness in the land / All the judges in their robes got their rubber stamps”. Hmmm...

“Rough & Twisted” musically resides in contradistinction to “In The Stars”. Like many Stones’ rockers -- and after the gentle guitar intro, it jogs into a muscular blues-infused guitar-harmonica-piano blizzard. While “In The Stars” travels within a celestial state of retrospection, “Rough And Twisted” follows a more earthy pathway. In one short segment I watched on YouTube.com, Jagger describes the song almost like a diatribe against bad travel instructions, leading into a miserable morass of an evening. It goes like this:”Yeah, why don't you drive me / Down that rough and twisted road? / Why don't you guide me? / 'Cause I don't know which way to go”.

I mean, let’s be real about it, this writer is in his mid-Seventies. BUT Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, the stewards of this rock-and-roll powerhouse, are both 82 years old. (Lead guitarist Ron Wood is the youngster at 78. And stalwart drummer Charlie Watts passed five years ago.) But then again, two years ago, at age 83, Smokey Robinson released Gasms, a collection of sensual love songs. And I hear Smokey recently collaborated with Santana. The late great Tony Bennett was kicking it with his last recording when he was 95! The 75-year-old living legend Bruce Springsteen refused to even relax; instead he is taking things higher into the socio-musical atmosphere. So Jagger and Richards -- these two octogenarians -- refuse to be confined to retirement somewhere, but continue to rock the house! So age is only a number, as they say.

So what can we find with this two-song single that has generated some crazed excitement in anticipation of the forthcoming whole enchilada? Taking a dialectical look, the two songs seem to conflict with each other—musically and lyrically —yet serve as two sides of the same coin. And, historically speaking, the Stones have always been solidly rooted in the Chicago blues, yet never permanently found in one specific parking lot stall with their various musical presentations. So what else should we expect and anticipate from Foreign Tongues when it drops?

Afterword. It should be noted that three (3) fake A.I.-generated singles “credited” to the Rolling Stones are swimming with the brouhaha -- creating a lot of digital confusion. I’m not gonna name them, but the alleged new songs were created by A.I. and are NOT by the Stones. They eerily replicate the Stones’ sound, but come off a bit flat. We now live in a strange new world of artificial intelligence, but we must insist on originality and authenticity in the arts.