Mick Jagger has released a new – and amusing – solo single, Eazy Sleazy, that rails against the boredom of lockdowns during the coronavirus pandemic.
Dave Grohl plays drums, bass and guitar on the track, released as fans await the next Rolling Stones studio LP, which was teased in 2020.
Rather depressingly, given that, at 77, Jagger is still a larger-than-life rock star, he appears to have had a remarkably similar and boring lockdown experience to ordinary people. The lyrics refer to him learning TikTok dances, lamenting fake football fan noise, and running out of clean clothes.
One lyric reads: “Trying to write a tune / You better hook me up to Zoom / See my poncey books / Teach myself to cook / Way too much TV / It’s lobotomising me / Think I’ve put on on weight / I’ll have another drink / Then I’ll clean the kitchen sink.”
He also complains of being "bossed around by p***ks", presumably regarding the privations of lockdown, but admits: "We took it on the chin / the numbers were so grim." Tongue presumably in cheek, he frets: "Shooting the vaccine / Bill Gates is in my bloodstream / It's mind control."
Jagger brightens in the song's second half, predicting "a garden of earthly delights" in the wake of the pandemic – timed perfectly alongside the reopening of pub gardens in England this week – when "everything's going to get real freaky … it's gonna be smooth and greasy".
It is Jagger’s first solo single since 2017’s double A-side, Gotta Get a Grip / England Lost.
In April 2020, the Rolling Stones released their first original music since 2012, the single Living in a Ghost Town. It was written prior to the coronavirus crisis, but seemed to pre-empt it, with the lines: "Life was so beautiful / Then we all got locked down … Please let this be over / Stuck in a world without end." Keith Richards said the band had been recording it as part of a new album, with sessions disrupted by the pandemic.
Grohl said recording with Jagger was “beyond a dream come true – just when I thought life couldn’t get any crazier”. Last week, the Foo Fighters frontman announced his first memoir, The Storyteller. – Guardian
