Angry for some Stones-cooked Hors D’oeuvre?

Every paleontologist and their granduncle have understandably rushed in to remind everyone under the age of 180 about the remarkable powers of the Rolling Stones to keep, well, rolling.

I leave them to it to understand the chronology. But before the Durga Puja release of the Stones’s 24th studio album, Hackney Diamonds (an old East London slang for smashed glass) on October 20, let me start you up with their latest single from the record, ‘Angry’, which was released last week.



For starters, if you’re expecting it to be a sneer like ‘Get Off My Cloud’, ‘Midnight Rambler’, or ‘Slave’, this isn’t that whisky bar. The production is too polished — botoxed by producer-co-songwriter Andrew Watt? — to be properly irate.

The jagged guitars announce a shruggy “let’s dance and make up” song about putting a Delhi Police barrier-style closure with an ex.

Although Mick Jagger suddenly singing “It hasn’t rained for a month,/ the river’s run dry/ We haven’t made love/ and I wanna know why” does confuse you whether closure is indeed the intent.

Keith Richards’s riff is eminently serrated. But is it just me who hears the phantom chorus of Backstreet Boys’s ‘Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)’ when Jagger reaches the chorus “Don’t get angry with me”? Don’t get me wrong. It’s a boppy tune with a Grade A guitar solo.

I’d treat it as a nice hors d’oeuvre that sets us on course with the main course. We’ve been told a Beatle (Paul) is playing bass in another song (‘Bite My Head Off’), Lady Gaga is at the mic with Mick and Stevie Wonder on keyboards in ‘Sweet Sounds of Heaven’, and Elton John has also chipped in.

On my Spotify list, ‘Angry’ rolls over to ‘Honky Tonk Women’, the 1969 single that also starts with the crack of drums. But like the Stones themselves, and unlike their latest single, this classic track certainly shows no sign of wanting closure at all.