Mick Jagger and Ronnie Wood Preview ‘Ringing Hollow’ at Intimate London Event

Ahead of the Rolling Stones’ 25th album Foreign Tongues this Friday, Mick Jagger and Ronnie Wood surprised guests at a London event with an unannounced acoustic performance of “Ringing Hollow.” A clip shared on Instagram shows Jagger, Wood, and keyboardist Matt Clifford delivering the song at what appears to be an intimate hotel gathering—likely the St. Clement Hotel, where the band held an album launch the same evening. Keith Richards, who co-wrote the track, did not appear in the video.

The song is a loping country rocker that carries the ghost of Gram Parsons. Jagger’s lyrics list a romance gone sour with the United States: “I was madly in love with you / Before we ever met / I saw all your movies / I smoked your cigarettes,” before settling on the image that “Lady Liberty is wearing a frown.” It’s a bittersweet farewell, delivered without bombast.

Foreign Tongues also includes the previously released singles “Jealous Lover” and “Divine Intervention”—the latter featuring Robert Smith on guitar—alongside “In the Stars” and “Rough and Twisted.” A companion podcast, Speaking in Tongues hosted by Norah Jones, launched alongside the record; its second episode is already available.

Richards, meanwhile, has tempered expectations for a tour. “I don’t know if tours are possible. It’s the traveling that takes it out of you,” he said recently, though he left the door open for a residency format in cities like London, New York, or Paris.