Simple Minds Look Ahead With New LP ‘Sacrosanct’

Simple Minds have spent the better part of five decades proving that momentum can be its own kind of longevity. Now Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill are preparing to extend that run with Sacrosanct, a new studio album due Jan. 29 via BMG. Lead single “Beginner Boys” is out now.

The album arrives amid a remarkable stretch for the Scottish band behind 1985’s smash “Don’t You (Forget About Me),” which has remained almost constantly on the road while continuing to find new audiences for music that began in the post-punk and new wave era and eventually grew into something stadium-sized. When SPIN spoke with Kerr and Burchill in 2025, the pair described a band still energized by the response to its live shows, with demand for Simple Minds having increased rather than diminished in recent years.

More from Spin:

• Author, Feminist Icon Gloria Steinem Dies At 92
• B.B. King Getting Doc, Biopic Treatment
• Mary J. Blige Disavows Ad For AI Music Company Suno

That touring momentum helped shape Sacrosanct. During the band’s 2025 North American run, Kerr and Burchill were struck by audiences’ reactions to early material, including “Sons and Fascination,” prompting them to reconnect with the art-rock and new-wave instincts of their early days. The resulting eight-song album is described as both direct and ethereal, with the duo leaning into the chemistry that has sustained them since they were teenagers in Glasgow.

“Beginner Boys” grew from Kerr watching his twin grandsons and wondering what it means to raise a good man in the present day. The song considers whether “strength, tenderness, courage and gentleness” can coexist in a culture that often sends contradictory signals.

The album’s themes move between the mythic and the personal. “Elysium,” its opening track, takes its name from the Greek paradise reserved for those who lived well or fought hard, while “King of the Underworld” turns toward Mephistopheles and the forces that rule our appetites. “Jerusalem (State of Mind)” draws on William Blake’s vision of a better world, and “Our Secrets Are the Same” looks directly at the extraordinary friendship between Kerr and Burchill — two eight-year-olds who met on a Glasgow street and have spent more than 50 years making music together.

“We called the album Sacrosanct because after a lifetime of doing this — nearly 50 years of writing songs together — it’s stopped feeling like a career and started feeling like something closer to faith,” Kerr says. “Calling the record Sacrosanct isn’t an exaggeration. It’s just honest.”

In 2025, SPIN found Kerr and Burchill juggling an extensive North American tour with a live double album, Live in the City of Diamonds, and the career-spanning documentary Simple Minds: Everything is Possible. Indeed, last year, the band played to more than 1.5 million people on its global tour, including some of its biggest crowds since 1985. Sacrosanct will accompany their biggest arena tour to date, beginning in Australia and New Zealand in February before moving through Europe and the U.K. in April and May. Gary Numan and Level 42 will support throughout.

Meanwhile, on Sept. 8, Kerr and Burchill’s long-awaited joint memoir Our Secrets Are The Same will hit stores. Like the new record, the book centers on the bond behind the band.

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.