Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen has opened up about the band’s upcoming album. He revealed that Queen is serving as their creative blueprint in a recent interview.
Collen explained how Def Leppard has historically given themselves a creative brief for each album. He described how their new record is being shaped by the way Queen approached collaborative songwriting.
“We used to do albums and we’d give ourselves a brief,” Collen said. “Like there was a time [where] this is happening in pop music, you know? You’d have Backstreet Boys with these beautiful vocals and all that stuff, then you’d have Garbage that were kind of pushing the envelope.”
He then reflected on the band’s previous album and how the Queen influence began to take shape.
“What we’ve been doing now, I mean, the last album [Diamond Star Halos] was amazing. We did it during COVID. Me and Joe had the best time ever, just sending ideas. But we always wanted to be Queen. What Queen would do, you know. John Deacon writes ‘Another One Bites the Dust,’ but everyone puts everything into it.”
Collen offered a specific example of how that collaborative spirit played out during the making of their previous record.
“We had this song called ‘This Guitar’ that I wrote years ago, my friend C.J. Vanston and I. Sav, in his place in Sheffield, all he had was a Martin 12-string acoustic and it’s like, ‘Well, can you play that?’ So if we’d have been together, we would have been doing it different. It would have ended up differently. He actually played until his fingers bled. He was like playing 12 hours in his little studio and that’s something you would never do normally.”
Collen went on to draw a direct parallel between that approach and how Queen operated as a band.
“So, what Queen would do, you know, they would let Freddie Mercury take the stage and go, ‘Okay, we’re gonna put all this stuff in.’ You know, Roger Taylor doing all these high vocals and everyone put everything into other people’s songs, but it still had that Queen mark to it. But it also had something different,” he continued. “So we’ve started doing something like that and I think this album’s really diverse, the one we’re doing right now.”
The new album is shaping up to be one of the most ambitious projects in Def Leppard’s catalog. The band has been making steady progress on it throughout 2026, recording and mixing during downtime on tour and residencies.
The follow-up to 2022’s Diamond Star Halos is expected to arrive in early 2027. Frontman Joe Elliott confirmed the timeline in a recent interview. He noted that the band has recorded approximately 18 songs and plans to narrow the final track list down to 10 or 11. Elliott also revealed that the album’s lead single, “Rejoice,” will serve as the opening track on the record.
The band has taken an unconventional approach to the recording process this time around. Parts of the album were recorded in a makeshift studio set up in the basement of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas during the band’s residency there in February. Members used downtime between shows to lay down new material.
Guitarist Vivian Campbell has indicated that the band has recorded enough songs for two full albums. He described the upcoming release as likely to be a packed, single-volume collection rather than a double record. Elliott has described the album as the most diverse the band has ever made, with the fastest and most bombastic songs of their career included in the mix.
The Queen-inspired collaborative method Collen describes represents a meaningful evolution in how Def Leppard approaches songwriting. Rather than songs being shaped primarily by whoever wrote them, the band is now actively encouraging every member to pour their ideas into each other’s material. The goal is to ensure the result still carries the unmistakable Def Leppard identity while pushing into new creative territory.
