Songfacts®:

• The first original Rolling Stones song in eight years, the band originally cut "Living In A Ghost Town" in a Los Angeles studio back in 2019. When the coronavirus pandemic started spreading worldwide, Jagger and Richards thought the song would resonate. The four group members fine-tuned the track in isolation and released it on April 23, 2020.
• Jagger explained to Zane Lowe of Apple Music that he was jamming on the guitar and quickly penned some lyrics "about being in a place which was full of life but is now bereft of life" in around 10 minutes.
  
  Once the world started locking down because of COVID-19, Jagger and Richards both decided the band should release the reggae-flavored, harmonica-driven track. However, Jagger wanted to rewrite the lyrics. "Some of it is not going to work and some of it was a bit weird and a bit too dark," he explained. "So I slightly rewrote it. I didn't have to rewrite very much, to be honest. It's very much how I originally did it."
• The previous original Rolling Stones songs released were "Doom and Gloom" and "One More Shot" from the band's 2012 hits collection GRRR!
• Dating from sessions with producer Don Was in Los Angeles in 2019, the song became eerily relevant when the pandemic swept the world. Jagger told Uncut magazine. "When I look back on my original lyric notes, I'd written it about being left in a semi-alive state after a plague. It was weird because it wasn't really that different, if you know what I mean. I'd done some of the vocals, but I hadn't really finished them."
• A songwriter named Sergio Garcia Fernandez (stage name Angelslang) bought legal action against Jagger and Richards, claiming "Living In A Ghost Town" copied his 2006 song "So Sorry" as well as his 2007 tune "Seed of God."