Rolling Stones to Release ‘Forty Licks’ Digitally for the First Time

The Rolling Stones are reissuing their 2002 album, Forty Licks, in digital form for the first time. More than 20 years after the release of Forty Licks – a 40-song compilation album across two discs that encompassed the band’s career up to the point of its release in 2002 – the Stones are releasing the album digitally for the first time on July 26.

Also new is the four-disc, limited edition black vinyl version that is available on July 28. The band is bringing their classic songs into the new age by releasing reimagined Dolby Atmos versions of the album’s 40 tracks that will be available on streaming platforms.

Forty Licks was originally released on September 30, 2002, as a 40-year career retrospective featuring many of their iconic hits “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” “Get Off of My Cloud,” “Sympathy for the Devil,” “Paint it Black” and many more. In a press release, Forty Licks is described as, “The album that gathered together fully three dozen of the most enduring and anthemic songs from the group’s peerless career and added four then-new tracks to their incredible story.”

“I wrote ‘Satisfaction’ in my sleep,” Keith Richards explained in his book about one of the band’s signature hits. “I had no idea I’d written it. Thank God for the little Philips cassette player, the miracle being that I looked at the cassette player that morning, and I knew I’d put a brand-new tape in the previous night, and I saw it was the end. It was just a rough idea. There was just the bare bones of the song, and it didn’t have that noise, of course, because I was on acoustic… But the bare bones is all you need.”

Forty Licks charted in multiple countries around the world, reaching No. 2 on both the Billboard Hot 100 chart and in the Stones’ native England on the UK Albums chart. It served as the first retrospective album that combined the music they made in the 1960s while signed to Decca Records with that of their work in the 1970s and onward that was distributed by Virgin Records and EMI.

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