The Rolling Stones have shared a taster of new music under the name The Cockroaches – check it out below.
Rumours have been circling in recent weeks that the rock legends are planning on making an announcement of new music, with cryptic posters being spotted around London.
All of the clues suggested that they would be using the alternative name The Cockroaches, an alias that Mick Jagger and co. have used in the past to play secret shows, while QR codes have been taking fans to a website reading, “Who The Fuck Are The Cockroaches?”.
On Friday (April 10), a teaser video was shared on an Instagram channel under the name thecockroaches2026, along with a caption that read simply “64 & Counting”, a reference to the number of years since the band were founded.
In the video, an unidentified man wearing a “Who The Fuck Are The Cockroaches?” t-shirt puts on a white label 12” record and sits to listen. The track opens with a dirty blues electric guitar riff, and it cuts off just as the unmistakable sound of Jagger’s voice sings, “Do it!”
Check it out here:
Earlier this week, The Times reported that the Stones’ new single would be called ‘Rough And Twisted’ and would feature Jagger singing about driving “down a rough and twisted road all the way to Puerto Rico, where the tide ebbs and flowers and you do feel that something sexual may be happening along the way”.
“You just took me to a flyblown town in the middle of nowhere/ The smell was acrid and toxic/ Couldn’t breathe the air,” Jagger is reported to sing on the track, and there is also a “killer riff” and “a rambunctious harmonica solo” from the frontman.
It has also been confirmed that this new track is the first single to be shared from a Rolling Stones album titled ‘Foreign Tongues’. It would be their first since 2023’s Grammy-winning ‘Hackney Diamonds’, their 25th studio album, and is expected to be released on July 10.
Like ‘Hackney Diamonds’ – which was their first since the death of Charlie Watts – the new record will see the Stones once again join forces with Andrew Watt.
Watt revealed last year that he had been helping them make another album, and guitarist Ronnie Wood himself later confirmed reports that new music was in the works – saying that it was done and set to arrive in 2026.
The band are unlikely to announce a full tour anytime soon. Last year, they confirmed that they scrapped plans for a UK and European stadium tour in 2026, due to Keith Richards being unable to “commit” to it.
If they came to fruition, the gigs would have been the first tour dates from them since they went out on their ‘Hackney Diamonds’ tour in the US in 2024. They sold nearly a million tickets across those 20 dates and generated an estimated $235million (£185.1million) – making it to Number Six on the highest-grossing music world tours of that year.
The Stones last played the UK in 2022, when two huge BST Hyde Park gigs followed a stadium show at Liverpool’s Anfield.