What is it like to listen to new Rolling Stones music in 2024? You might think of overabundant slickness ,everything-to-everyone commerciality, a sense of rock-by-committee. But if your immediate association with the band is their status as an industry unto themselves — with the music as an afterthought — then you may not know the Rolling Stones.

"This is a performance-based record; this is live. That's why it speeds up and slows down and pushes and pulls — the only way the Stones should be." That's what GRAMMY-winning producer Andrew Watt — the "sprightly young fellow" that Paul McCartney recommended to the band — told Rolling Stone of the Stones' new album, Hackney Diamonds.

But it goes deeper than that. In a scathing review of Hackney Diamonds, Pitchfork declared the Stones to "gleam like sickly wax figures. Jagger, terrifyingly, has never sounded so youthful." Has Jagger been rendered animatronic? A resounding no — at 80, he simply remains a force of nature — as do his fellow surviving Stones, guitarists Keith Richards and Ron Wood.

"I've never seen anybody push themselves to the level that this guy pushed himself to in the studio," Watt continued to Rolling Stone. "He never left a vocal without a full deep sweat, putting every single thing he had into it every time." Best of all, this wasn't in the pursuit of perfection, but a beautiful racket.

"What's so f—ing cool," Watt continued, "is sometimes he'd do a take and he'd be like, 'I'm singing too good. I need to do that again and throw that away more… give it more feeling.'"

Across seven decades, the Stones have more than earned their stripes as the self-dubbed "World's Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band" — and so much of it has to do with that feeling.

That's why they're in the upper echelon, toe-to-toe with the Beatles in that tired binary, despite never pursuing a fraction of their innovation or ambition. Because when it comes to bluesy yearning, broiling salaciousness and that guitar weave, no guitar band has ever come close.

As veteran music journalist Rob Sheffield once put it, "Part of Mick's vast intelligence was to understand that he didn't have that kind of sincerity in his empty heart, and he was too crafty to make a clown of himself trying to fake it. He knew he couldn't out-Beatle the Beatles. So the Stones chose different turf to conquer. The Stones are Stonesier. The Beatles are merely better."

There's no way that a single article can contain all the facets of the Stones. But if you saw the news of Hackney Diamonds — their first album of original material in 18 years — and find yourself catching the bug again, here's a brief breakdown of their vast catalog.

The Brian Jones Era (1962-1969)

The thing about the greatest rock 'n' roll bands is that they tend to have ghosts following them around — e.g. integral, original members who lost their way, or their life, early on.

The Beatles did, in the incorporeal form of Stu Sutciffe. So did Pink Floyd, in Syd Barrett. Today, the spirits of Dennis and Carl Wilson silently observe the Beach Boys. The list goes on and on.

The Stones might have the ultimate band ghost in Brian Jones — their bowl-cutted, blonde angel who actually started the group, back in 1962.

Many decades on, Paul McCartney got flak for calling the Stones a "blues cover band," which obviously didn't take into account the Glimmer Twins' numberless, unforgettable originals. But that was what they were, from the jump.

If you haven't heard their 1964, self-titled debut, subtitled England's Newest Hit Makers, it's a proto-punk banger — with revved-up takes on "Route 66" and Chuck Berry's "Carol," among other selections from across the garage R&B canon.

Very soon after, the Stones began writing inspired originals, like "As Tears Go By" and "Get Off of My Cloud." (Not to mention, er, one you may have heard about "girl reaction.") Around the time of 1966's Aftermath — their first masterpiece — Jones was decorating their tunes with outré instrumentation, like the ominous sitar on "Paint It, Black."

Jones continued to make inspired contributions to the Stones' palette, including in their still-underrated 1967 goof on Sgt. Pepper's, Their Satanic Majesties Request.

As he became eclipsed  by Jagger and Richards, Jones became more and more unmanageable, culminating in his ousting and drowning in a pool in 1969.

This earliest incarnation of the Stones has its partisans: it's arguable that they never went on to write a song as lovely as the acoustic "Back Street Girl," for example. But with the passing of the torch to Mick Taylor, the stadium-sized version we all know and love was rapidly approaching.

The Mick Taylor Era (and after) (1969-1976)

While Taylor's tenure as Stones axeman lasted only five years, the former Bluesbreaker might be the greatest guitarist the band ever enjoyed.

After a couple of cameos on 1969's epochal Let it Bleed — the one with "Gimme Shelter" and "You Can't Always Get What You Want" on it — Taylor joined the band proper for 1971's Sticky Fingers, one of their most beloved albums by far.

Therein, that aforementioned weave is on full display, between Richards and Taylor: they should teach the rhythmic underpinning of "Brown Sugar" and "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" in school. 

Plus, the immortal, still soul-inflaming ballad "Wild Horses" contains perhaps their most elliptical, haunting lyric: "Let's do some living after we die."

Despite Jagger's vocal dislike of the album, the double-disc Exile on Main St. is considered their masterpiece for very good reasons: Despite the brilliance of albums like Aftermath onward, they hadn't quite made an album that hung together cohesively, with a clear arc.

But Exile on Main St. — famously recorded grungy, topless and stoned in a rented French villa, as tax exiles — is worth many, many listens, front to back. It begins gakked out and flying high, as on "Rocks Off," then ends clear-eyed, hungover and grappling for salvation, as on "Shine a Light."

The Stones never quite revisited the heights of Exile on Main St. — although its lumpy, potent follow-up, 1973's Goats Head Soup, deserves more flowers.

After 1974's It's Only Rock n' Roll — chiefly known for the oldies favorite of a title track — Taylor left on short notice, following personality differences and rancor over credits.

He was replaced by the Faces' Ron Wood — essentially the Stones' version of Ringo, in that he was never considered a technical whiz, but the glue that continues to hold colorful, volatile personalities together.

Forging On With Ron (1976-present)

Jagger, Richards, bassist Bill Wyman, and drummer Charlie Watts' first album with Wood was 1976's Black and Blue, their most exhausted album by some margin. (Which doesn't mean it's bad at all: bone-weary Stones has a patina all its own, and "Memory Motel" belongs in the time capsule.)

But this rudderlessness proved to be a fluke: they followed it with 1978's Some Girls, at the height of punk and disco. That album's highlights, like "Miss You," "Beast of Burden" and "Shattered," restored the band to their debaucherous glory.

The follow-up, 1980's Emotional Rescue, was fine, but a bit of a bunt. Especially compared to the following year's Tattoo You, a terrifically echoey and plasticine document of their stadium prowess with a lead single implanted in our heads from birth: "Start Me Up."

Unfortunately, the ensuing '80s were as unkind to the Stones as they were to 95 percent of their contemporaries — although 1989's rewarding Steel Wheels is an ugly duckling worth hearing at least once. That year, their inimitable bassist Wyman left the group, never to fully return.

The Stones released a grand total of two albums in the '90s, mostly raking it in as titans of the live circuit. In 2005, they released A Bigger Bang, which would turn out to be their final album until 2016, in the back-to-basics blues-covers release Blue & Lonesome.

Tragically, in 2021, Watts — their steely, enigmatic engine driver, and a reluctant rock star if there ever was one — passed away of cancer.

Before his death, they'd fitfully hit the studio. But this time, they set a hard deadline, with a plucky, 30-something producer — and the result was the Stones' most acclaimed album in many decades.

Watts: A Light Goes Out (2021-present)

It's hard to put into words how bone-snappingly vital the Stones sound on 2023's Hackney Diamonds, deep into the AARP demographic.

The lead single, "Angry" — nominated for Best Rock Song at the 2024 GRAMMYs — finds Watts' appointed heir, Steve Jordan, leading the charge, with the three soul survivors powered by that old piss and vinegar.

From there, all the way to the Muddy Waters coda ("Rolling Stone Blues") that gave the band their name, Hackney Diamonds is a triumph.

The ridiculously high-profile guests throughout, like Elton John ("Get Close"), McCartney ("Bite My Head Off") and Lady Gaga and Stevie Wonder ("Sweet Sounds of Heaven"), never feel like they're buoying the proceedings; they sound like the Stones' most voracious fans, living the dream. (As McCartney put it after tracking his viciously fuzzy bass part: "I just played f—ing bass with the Stones — and I'm a f—ing Beatle."

Jagger and Richards are adamant this isn't the end: half an album's already in the can. Who knows where it'll go — but one thing is certain, they'll never dilute or compromise this stew. That feeling — the one they've been chasing since they were flop-haired teenagers — is much too important.

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