The Rolling Stones and Lady Gaga duet at the Hackney Diamonds launch party
The Rolling Stones have made a significant and widely discussed return to the music scene with the release of their latest studio album, Hackney Diamonds. This record serves as the band’s first collection of original music since the 2005 release of A Bigger Bang. The gap between these two projects spans eighteen years, a period during which the band maintained their status as rock icons while occasionally shifting their focus toward other endeavors, such as their 2016 blues covers album, Blue & Lonesome. Unlike that previous collection, which some listeners found to be a more conventional or even contrived exercise in genre interpretation, Hackney Diamonds is being presented as a dynamic and powerful project that successfully bridges the gap between the group’s historical essence and a contemporary sonic landscape. It is a record that the band members are actively getting behind and promoting, marking a distinct shift in their recent output.
A central highlight of the new album is the collaboration with Lady Gaga on the track Sweet Sounds of Heaven. The circumstances surrounding this partnership were entirely serendipitous, according to Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood. During an interview with Sky News, Wood explained that the collaboration came to fruition simply because Lady Gaga was working within the same studio complex at the time the band was recording. This was not the first instance of the two parties working together; Lady Gaga had previously joined the band on stage during their 50 and Counting tour. Specifically, on December 14, 2012, she performed a rendition of the classic Gimme Shelter with the group. That tour featured a rotation of different female vocalists for the song, including Florence Welch and Mary J. Blige, but the chemistry between Lady Gaga and the band clearly left a lasting impression on the group.
The vocal performance delivered by Lady Gaga on Sweet Sounds of Heaven has prompted many reviewers to draw comparisons to the legendary background vocals provided by Merry Clayton on the original recording of Gimme Shelter. Such a comparison is widely viewed as a major compliment within the rock community. Lady Gaga herself addressed the collaboration on Instagram, noting that she sang in a manner she had never truly explored before, with the notable exception of her previous work alongside Mick Jagger. Critics have frequently described the climax of this gospel-and-soul-influenced track as a vocal duel between the two performers. Billboard, for instance, characterized the song’s progression as building toward a pair of intense, growly soul shout-off peaks that define the track’s emotional energy.
The album’s rollout was spearheaded by the lead single Angry, a track that opens with a guitar riff that many listeners have noted bears a stylistic resemblance to the band’s 1981 hit Start Me Up. The commercial performance of these singles has been notable; Angry reached the number 34 position on the UK singles chart and number 32 on the US Billboard Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart. Meanwhile, Sweet Sounds of Heaven achieved even greater success, reaching number 2 on the UK singles chart and appearing at number 29 on the US Billboard Digital Song Sales chart.
Watch the full performance on page two
