The Rolling Stones today announced the release of a brand-new Best Of compilation album, Honk. Featuring the biggest hits and classic cuts from every Rolling Stones studio album from 1971 to 2016’s Blue & Lonesome, Honk is out on 19 April 2019.
Released via Polydor on 2×CD, 3×LP vinyl and digital, Honk collects 36 essential Stones’ tracks – including eight Top 10 singles, “Brown Sugar”, “Tumbling Dice”, “Angie”, “It’s Only Rock And Roll (But I Like It)”, “Fool To Cry”, “Miss You”, “Emotional Rescue” and “Start Me Up”. Bringing the band’s story up to date, Honk also contains hit single “Doom & Gloom” – recorded in 2012 – as well as “Just Your Fool”, “Ride ‘Em Down” and “Hate To See You Go” from the band’s 2016’s Grammy Award-winning, No 1 album, Blue & Lonesome.
The bonus disc of the deluxe 3×CD edition includes 10 live tracks recorded at packed-out stadiums round the world during the band’s more recent sold-out tours. These include “Dead Flowers”, with Americana star Brad Paisley, recorded in Philadelphia in June 2013 and “Bitch” with Foo Fighters front man Dave Grohl, both during the 50 And Counting tour as well as an electrifying version of “Wild Horses”, featuring Florence Welch, from the band’s show in London in May 2018 during last year’s leg of the No Filter tour.
Honk showcases the band’s remarkable run of hits. Taken from the band’s imperial phase, Honk features “Happy” (Exile On Main Street, 1972), “Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)” (Goat’s Head Soup, 1973) and “Beast Of Burden” (Some Girls, 1978) alongside later singles like “Waiting On A Friend” (Tattoo You, 1981), “Undercover (Of The Night” (Undercover, 1983), “Harlem Shuffle” (Dirty Work, 1986), “Rock And A Hard Place” (Steel Wheels, 1989), “Love Is Strong” (Voodoo Lounge, 1994), “Out Of Control” (Bridges To Babylon, 1997), “Rough Justice” (A Bigger Bang, 2005) and “Just Your Fool” (Blue & Lonesome, 2016).
Honk also highlights classic Stones’ album cuts – “Bitch” (Sticky Fingers, 1971), “Rocks Off” (Exile On Main Street, 1972) “Dancing With Mr. D”, (Goat’s Head Soup, 1973) and “Respectable” (Some Girls, 1978) – as well as stand-alone tracks such as “Don’t Stop” (Forty Licks, 2002) and “One More Shot” (GRRR!).
The 10 live tracks are similarly wide-ranging, drawn from three of the band’s most recent tours, the 50 And Counting Tour, the Zip Code Tour and the No Filter Tour. These tours were powerful reminders of the Stones’ formidable gifts for performance and song-writing, as the band treated audiences to hits and deep cuts drawn from the full span of their illustrious career.
On Honk, “Get Off My Cloud”, “Let’s Spend The Night Together” and “Under My Thumb” (recorded in Cardiff, Manchester and London, respectively, during the 2018 No Filter tour) ably represent the band’s ground-breaking early-mid ‘60s years; while the version of “She’s A Rainbow” from Paris, 2017, provides a relatively rare outing of this classic piece of psychedelic Stones. The appearance of “Dancing With Mr. D”, meanwhile, recorded in Arnheim, 2017, marks the song’s acclaimed return to the band’s set lists for the first time in 44 years.
The Rolling Stones will be touring the USA with their ‘No Filter’ tour, starting tomorrow 20 April 2019, and are currently recording tracks for their next studio album.