How the hell does Mick Jagger still have moves like that?
That’s the question you kept asking yourself — in a state of complete and utter marvel — during the Rolling Stones’ first of two “Hackney Diamonds” Tour stops at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford on Thursday night.
On his first tour as an octogenarian — he turned 80 last July — the man who made Adam Levine look old on Maroon 5’s 2011 smash “Moves Like Jagger” is still out-shimmying us all.
Seeing Jumping Jack Jagger work as hard as ever to give the people what they came — and paid a pretty penny — was enough to restore the faith of even the most cynical New Yorker in the power of rock ’n’ roll.
Indeed, 60 years later after the Stones released their self-titled debut in 1964, the eternally bad-boy Brits staged a rock resurrection that the genre desperately needs.
It wasn’t only rock ’n’ roll — it was a revelation.
And it was in large part due to Jagger, who seems to have Benjamin Buttoned his energy — and body.
The man can still rock skinny jeans better than anybody else in the stadium.
Jagger was in such perpetual motion from the time he hit the stage to “Start Me Up” — the Stones’ 1981 hit that remains one of the most perfect concert openers of all time — that it was almost a shock when, four songs in, he struck the perfect still pose at the end of “Hackney Diamonds” single “Angry.”
Still, if there was ever one single moment that he seemed out of breath, it wasn’t captured by the giant video screens that put his famous lips on blast.
And, as if he somehow still had anything to prove, he was relentlessly selling and strutting to new tunes such as “Mess It Up” from the Stones’ underappreciated “Hackney Diamonds” album — which, released last October, was the band’s first album of original material since 2005’s “A Bigger Bang.”
A force of nature the likes of which we may never see again, he’s still the best rock frontman of all time.
Even when you think he’s going to have a senior moment — after all, this tour is sponsored by the AARP, which originally stood for the American Association of Retired Professionals — he rolls back the years.
Take “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” — a personal fave and highlight. As the wrinkles on his face — which he has, for the most part, tried not to hide — have revealed the ravages of time, the guitar-strumming singer still found a way to give the crowd exactly what they wanted.
Then there was “Miss You,” the 1978 Stones-go-disco hit that turned MetLife into Studio 54 for an epic, extended rendition, with longtime sideman Bernard Fowler bringing all that bass.
But although everyone came for the party, Jagger wasn’t afraid to get political.
At the end of “Wild Horses,” the ever-wild one encouraged concertgoers to get out the vote in this presidential election year.
