Mick Jagger has never sounded like a man ready to slow down, but in a recent interview he was blunt about one thing: getting older is not a gift he enjoys. Speaking to The New York Times, the Rolling Stones frontman said there was “nothing good about it” when asked what is positive about aging. When pressed for a brighter side, he laughed off the idea of wisdom too, saying he had “forgot all my wisdom” and may have learned a few things only to forget them again.
Jagger also described the physical realities of age without trying to dress them up. He said he can no longer do things as quickly as he wants to, and that he has to be more careful now. Even his football analogy came with a joke: when you get older, he said, they put you in goal a lot, and he admitted, “I’m not very good at it!”
Still, the Stones singer made clear that aging has not made him less engaged with the job. Instead, it has changed the way he thinks about performance and identity. Jagger said show business is built on different versions of the same person — the theater version, the interview version, the stadium version, the studio version, and the songwriting version — and that artists have to learn how to live with that split. In his view, the challenge is to stay close to whatever the “normal person underneath” really is.
That same interview also showed why Jagger may be older, but not creatively stuck. He said he would not have written some of his newer songs when he was 30, and explained that he has developed a habit of writing about personal relationships and then slipping politics into the middle of the song. Rather than making a track feel like a lecture, he said that approach lets him work political ideas into the music more naturally.
The timing matters, too. Jagger’s comments come as the Rolling Stones prepare to release their 25th studio album, Foreign Tongues, on July 10, 2026, a record Reuters reported includes guest spots from Paul McCartney, Robert Smith, Steve Winwood and others. Jagger said the band hopes to tour again and that he and Ronnie Wood are “really into” getting back on the road, even if nothing has been booked yet for this year.
That attitude tracks with how Jagger has described life on the road before. In a 2024 Reuters interview, he said touring felt like “being on stage at 78,” added that the Stones had settled into the groove, and said he simply loves performing. He also explained that he stays tour-ready with dance rehearsals and gym sessions, proving that longevity in rock is not just about attitude — it is about discipline.
Years earlier, he was already telling reporters that rock and pop were not really designed for people in their 70s, but that the challenge of doing it anyway was part of the appeal. At the time, he said he does daily dancing and gym work even if he does not enjoy it, because it has to be done. That older quote now reads like a preview of the same philosophy he is still living by: age may be a problem, but it is not a reason to stop.
