Mick Jagger sits a little back from the screen, almost small in the frame, a broad smile on his face. He is at home in London, he explains, waving a hand toward a window just out of shot. It is afternoon, but he has not yet been outside; the press cycle for the Rolling Stones’ 25th album, Foreign Tongues, is in full swing. “And now it’s Scandinavia’s turn,” he tells a Swedish interviewer, laughing when he learns Norway got there first. The exchange, published in Dagens Nyheter, captures the peculiar rhythm of a global promotional tour in 2026: a rock star in his eighties, proper and gentlemanly, fielding questions via video link about an album that, according to one British review, sounds “astonishingly good, not just for their age, but for a band 60 years younger.”

That album, Foreign Tongues, arrives on 10 July, and its early singles are already tracing familiar patterns on the UK’s physical-format charts. “Jealous Lover” debuts at No. 2 on both the Official Singles Sales and Official Physical Singles tallies, blocked from the top by Phoebe Bridgers’ “Lost Boys.” It is a near-miss the Stones know well: four of their songs have now peaked at No. 2 on the sales chart, while on the physical list they have five No. 1s. The vinyl single, a format once considered archival, has become a small but telling arena where veteran acts and younger songwriters jostle for position. The same week, Sabrina Carpenter’s “House Tour” enters the Official Vinyl Singles chart at No. 1, her fourth leader on that list, while Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the U.S.A.” – first released in 2009 – debuts at No. 21 after a new wax pressing. The vinyl chart, in other words, is not a nostalgia ghetto; it is a space where a Grammy-winning pop star’s latest single and a patriotic anthem from a Disney alum can coexist, their fates determined by the enthusiasms of collectors and superfans.

Viewed from London, the broader albums chart tells a parallel story of endurance and rediscovery. David Bowie’s Legacy compilation has now spent 500 weeks on the Official Albums chart, a milestone the singer never witnessed in his lifetime. It is his first title to reach that mark, and likely his only one: no other Bowie project has yet crossed 200 weeks. The compilation’s longevity is driven almost entirely by streaming, yet it is absent from any sales-only list – a reminder that the consumption of music now operates on multiple, often disconnected, planes. Katy Perry’s first greatest-hits set, The Ones That Got the Plays, climbs into the top 10 for the first time, lifted by the viral resurgence of “The One That Got Away,” a single from 2010. Her new track “Watch It Burn” lands at No. 25 on downloads, a modest entry that nonetheless extends a catalogue now spanning 41 download-chart appearances.

Meanwhile, a country song from Alabama is quietly rewriting the rules of transatlantic crossover. Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” rises to No. 2 on the UK’s Official Singles Downloads chart, held off the top by a dance collaboration. The track has already spent 31 weeks on that tally and this week reaches a new peak on the streaming chart as well. In the United States, it has just returned to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for a twelfth nonconsecutive frame. Its steady climb in Britain – where country music rarely penetrates the top tier – suggests that the genre’s global moment, long predicted, may finally be arriving in a form that does not require a cowboy hat. Langley’s success is built on digital sales and streams, not physical formats, yet it shares with the vinyl revival a common thread: audiences are finding and holding onto songs through channels that reward patience and personal connection over algorithmic flash.

Back in that London room, Jagger is asked if he ever tires of the astonishment that he is still creating and performing at 82. He shrugs. “You have to have a lot of energy to make the kind of music we make,” he says. “If you ever get less energy, you can always start doing ballads. But I’m not there yet.” On Foreign Tongues, the ballads are present, but so is the bite: lyrics that take aim at “Mad Mogul Mr Musk” and billionaires “scuttling, scrambling to their bolt holes in the sky.” It is a record, the singer notes, that is “glitterier” than its predecessor, yet threaded with dystopian strands. As the summer unfolds, the charts will register not only the first-week sales of a Stones album but the quieter accumulations – a Bowie compilation ticking past 500 weeks, a country hit inching toward the top, a vinyl single by a pop star that, for one frame at least, outsells everyone else.