Lets talk about their newer stuff...

Here are the contenders:

Steel Wheels (1989)

Voodoo Lounge (1994)

Bridges to Babylon (1997)

A Bigger Bang (2005)

Steel Wheels. Not only do I consider it the best of the last 25 years, but also one of the best of their entire career. A real return to form after Dirty Work and Undercover. That said, I haven't listened to A Bigger Bang, but I doubt I'd find it better than Steel Wheels.

My favourites of this era are Voodoo Lounge and A Bigger Bang. Many outstanding songs in my opinion. They are both records I often revisit for a listen. The only problem with these is that they both had too many songs. They should have cut both to ten songs and released the rest as b-sides.

I also like Bridges To Babylon though no as much as the two above. Not enough outstanding tracks.

Steels Wheels, while good, sounds a bit dated to me. It sounds a bit too stuck in the Eighties; like they were trying to hard to be in with the times.

As far as I'm concerned, the Stones never really made a bad record bar Dirty Work.

Voodoo Lounge is very strong. Love is strong is probably their best single release of the past 21 years, but even though I am not a fan of Steel wheels, I think Mixed Emotions and Rock in a hard place are very strong singles.

But overall, the post 1988 Stones albums are fairly good and add to rather than tarnish their legacy like all their 1980s albums except Steel Wheels and Tattoo You did. Dirty Work is terrible except Harlkem Shuffle which is tolerable.

This is a hard one. I love both Steel Wheels and Voodoo Lounge.

Can't decide

to each his own

in my opinion, A Bigger Bang was the best of the bunch, a solid A- hard/rock album made by veteran legends, a good mix of songs with radio potential, nasty rockers and some funk + blues experiments...

Bridges to Babylon was not bad, but it has 3-4 VERY BAD songs, and at times it sounds like a bunch of Jagger (decent) solo songs fighting against Richards' (excellent) material...("How Can I Stop" is perhaps my fav late-90s song)

Voodoo Lounge has THE 2 best RS song of the last 25 years, in my opinion ("Love is Strong" and "Thru and Thru"), but having 15 songs (cd era), the filler is evident, there are some successful experiments, but the album has too many slow numbers...("Sweethearts Together" is lame crap!)

Steel Wheels was the return to form but it has aged badly (unlike Some Girls or Tattoo You), it's a good album for what it was (a late-80s comeback + massive world tour) but not much more...too many elevator keys/horns; two GREAT ballads anyway ("Almost Hear You Sigh" and "Slipping Away")

A bit off topic, but Mick Jagger's Wandering Spirit, published between Steel Wheels and Vodoo Lounge, is an awesome album.

Javi said:

A bit off topic, but Mick Jagger's Wandering Spirit, published between Steel Wheels and Vodoo Lounge, is an awesome album.

well, wow, if we're including Talk is Cheap and Wandering Spirit, I gotta say that those solo albums are BETTER than the last 4 RS albums, LOL, A Bigger Bang being close, but not as good

Well, judging by what I'm reading here, I'll give A Bigger Bang a listen. I gradually lost interest in the Stones' new music during the 90's, so when they published A Bigger Bang I wasn't bothered. But maybe it was good, I'll try!