The Rolling Stones have dropped their first original song in eight years with the sudden, out-of-nowhere release of the new track, “Living In A Ghost Town.” Mick Jagger spoke about the song to Apple Music, and revealed he and Keith Richards wrote the tune over a year ago, explaining, “It wasn’t written for now, but it was just one of those odd things. It was written about being in a place, which was full of life but is now bereft of life so to speak. I was just jamming on the guitar and wrote it really quickly in like 10 minutes.”

He added, “Keith and I both had the idea that we should release it. But I said, ‘Well I’ve got to rewrite it.’ Some of it is not going to work and some of it was a bit weird and a bit too dark. So I slightly rewrote it. I didn’t have to rewrite very much, to be honest. It’s very much how I originally did it.”

Keith Richards revealed the band had recorded the new track in L.A. back in early-2019: “It’s sort of eerie when suddenly it’s coming to life. I mean the ghost comes to life. I had said to Don (Was) about a month or so ago, ‘Hey, this is a time for the ghost town track.’ And then Mick called me and said the same thing and that great minds think alike… Obviously right now we’ve got nothing else to do but write some more songs, right?”