The Rolling Stones’ Foreign Tongues Includes an Amy Winehouse Cover — Ronnie Wood Teases Album on Tonight Show

The Rolling Stones‘ 25th studio album, Foreign Tongues, arrives July 10 — and it quietly contains a striking tribute: a cover of Amy Winehouse‘s ‘You Know I’m No Good.’

Ronnie Wood, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards on stage during the No Filter Tour at SoFi Stadium on Oct. 14, 2021, in Inglewood, Calif.
Christopher Polk/Variety

Ronnie Wood brought that news to late-night viewers when he dropped by The Tonight Show on May 7, looking every bit the restless 78-year-old rock lifer. The band’s guitarist fizzed with the same mischievous energy he’s carried for decades, wound up into a harmonica jam with Jimmy Fallon and the house band, and spun stories about the recording sessions that produced Foreign Tongues.

Wood’s appearance also doubled as a reminder that he’ll be back on the road this summer for his first run of solo shows in 16 years — and that an exhibition of his paintings opens in Germany this November. Fans get to see both sides of his creative life: the restless noise of live guitar and the slower, solitary work of his canvases.

The album itself is a 14-track project led by the Stones’ core trio — Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Wood — with a roster of guests including Paul McCartney, Steve Winwood and Robert Smith. Two tracks have already surfaced: the opener ‘Rough and Twisted’ and lead single ‘In the Stars.’ On TV, Fallon read from a vinyl copy and revealed the Winehouse cover, a surprising but sensible nod given the band’s history with the late singer.

Winehouse once joined the Stones onstage at the Isle of Wight Festival in June 2007 for a rousing ‘Ain’t Too Proud to Beg,’ an onstage moment that now reads differently in light of this recorded tribute.

Fallon also teased a snippet of ‘Back In Your Life,’ calling Wood’s solo on the track “fantastic.” Wood explained that the solo practically wrote itself: he cut it the same day Brian Wilson died last June, while he was still raw from the news of Sly Stone’s passing days earlier. ‘It came out my guitar, the feeling, you know,’ he said. ‘Just one take. I didn’t do that, the guitar played itself.’

There’s an easy theatricality to these late-night run-ins — Wood’s visit came roughly 24 hours after Mick Jagger stopped by the same show for a comedy sketch — but the moments felt less like PR stunts and more like glimpses into a band that still relishes the craft of recording and the communal thrill of playing together.

For longtime listeners, Foreign Tongues promises the familiar collision of swagger and craft the Stones have refined across decades, now embroidered with unexpected cameos and a willingness to revisit and reinterpret. For fans showing up to Wood’s solo dates this summer, these new songs and the stories behind them will make the theater corridors buzz: a Stones record that also functions as a living archive of the artists who orbit them.

‘It’s inspirational to do music and art,’ Wood told Fallon, summing up why he keeps moving between canvases and stages. ‘You know, I’m lucky enough to do a solo thing with the painting, and then be a part of a band, you know, part of a group, to express musically. It’s such a gift, you know, to be able to do both.’