Rock
Def Leppard tease their fastest-ever song and Queen‑inspired moments on upcoming album
Def Leppard say their upcoming album includes their fastest song yet alongside piano‑driven tracks inspired by Queen and Elton John.
Def Leppard frontman Joe Elliott has revealed that the band have created their “fastest song that we’ve ever recorded” and several piano‑led tracks that echo the theatrical flair of Queen and Sir Elton John.
Speaking on Riff X’s Metal XS, Elliott described the project as one of the band’s most stylistically wide‑ranging releases to date.
He said: “It's a very varied album. It's a very eclectic record. I think it's gonna surprise a lot of people. But if I told you too much about it, it wouldn't be that much of a surprise.”
Elliott explained that the new material continues the creative evolution Def Leppard have embraced across their recent work, including their self‑titled album, Diamond Star Halos, and their orchestral re‑imagining Drastic Symphonies.
He said: “It's like the direction that Def Leppard has gone in over the last 15 years or so musically, from the Def Leppard album through Diamond Star Halos and even reworking the Drastic Symphony stuff. People shouldn't be too surprised that our music works in those environments.”
He pointed to the band’s willingness to reinterpret their own catalogue as proof of how adaptable their songwriting has become.
He said: “When you listen to Drastic Symphonies, things like Switch 625 end up sounding like a James Bond car chase, which is how we always should have sounded. Doing the piano version of Pour Some Sugar On Me. If you can do a song in a different way to the way it's normally done, you've normally got a good song.”
Elliott added that the band have been writing with that philosophy in mind: “We always say that if you can campfire a song, the song's good, no matter which way you're trying to record it. So we are writing songs tailored to that way of thinking.”
That approach has led to some unexpected turns.
He teased: “So there's big bombastic - I'm not gonna say ballads, but slower tunes that are very in the vein of Queen or Elton John, because there's a piano involved. And then there's other stuff that's... I think we've written the fastest song that we've ever recorded, and things in between.”
He said the album balances familiar elements with bold new ideas.
He explained: “Some of it will sound like what you expect, because that's what we do. But some of it we've gone off a tangent and, 'Okay, yeah, this is gonna be fun. It's gonna be fun to see how people react to this because it's not like anything we've ever done before.' And that's the fun of doing this. We don't wanna make Pyromania 2. We don't wanna make Hysteria 2. We've done that. We wanna make something different but equally as interesting.”
The band began 2026 with the release of the lead single, Rejoice, which grew from a lyrical idea Elliott brought to guitarist Phil Collen.
Def Leppard are currently performing their Las Vegas residency at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace. They will return to the UK and Europe in June and July 2026, including a headline date at The O2 and their first show in Paris in nearly 30 years.
