PALMDALE, Calif. — The Rolling Stones released a video for “Mr Charm” on Saturday with Alexander Skarsgård in the lead, and they put a Mick Jagger and Keith Richards duet that had been missing from streaming back into circulation at the same time.
Henry Scholfield directed the clip in the California desert. Skarsgård is not impersonating Jagger. He plays the character the song describes, moving through a backwoods diner. Foreign Tongues, the band’s 14-track album released July 10, has already used Anya Taylor-Joy and Charles Melton in “Jealous Lover” and Odessa A’zion in “In The Stars.” The Hackney Diamonds cycle cast Sydney Sweeney in “Angry.”
The song takes a swing at the state of the world, including a pointed mention of Elon Musk, without dropping the band’s usual humor. Ronnie Wood has called it a way to keep people smiling while being blunt about what he sees going wrong, including heat and cold that keep getting more extreme. Jagger has said the groove is built for dancing and for a lyric that has to be spit in time. Steve Winwood plays organ. Steve Jordan is on drums. The riff started with Jagger before Richards and Wood added guitars.
“Bad Luck Hideaway,” the track returning to streaming, is a Jagger-Richards duet with Charlie Watts on drums, recorded at British Grove. Watts died in 2021. Andrew Watt, who produced Foreign Tongues and Hackney Diamonds, produced this one too. The album itself was made in under a month at Metropolis Studios in West London. One pre-release single, “Rough and Twisted,” went out as a white-label vinyl under the name The Cockroaches.