Joe Elliott Talks New Def Leppard LP: ‘Every Song Is Different’
Def Leppard have always drawn from a variety of influences, and according to singer Joe Elliott, the band's new album incorporates all of them — and then some.
"It's all over the place," said Elliott during a recent appearance on That Metal Show. "Every song is different from every other song. We've always aimed at that. We hit it for the first time on Hysteria, where we'd done an album that allowed us to go in any direction we wanted to — it wasn't just purely hard rock or metal."
Although he started out by name-checking one of the band's biggest hits, Elliott quickly made it clear that fans shouldn't expect a Hysteria sequel. "There's some real classic Leppard-sounding stuff on the new album, but there's also some stuff that a band that's of our standing — basically, in our 50s — should be doing, which is a little bit more ... I don't wanna say grown up, because that makes it sound boring, but a little bit more ... organic, I think is probably the best way to put it," he mused. "We've allowed our roots, or the music that we were steeped in of other people, to soak into our music a little bit more."
As Elliott sees it, the band's increased maturity has brought with it a willingness to let their influences show more clearly than ever. "We've been honest enough to just say, 'Well, if it sounds a bit like Led Zeppelin' or 'This song sounds like Queen,' then that's us," he continued. "But we weren't trying to disguise everything too much — we just let it breathe and just be natural."
All that being said, Elliott still doesn't know exactly what the album will sound like when it's finished. "It's a very mixed bag of songs. There's fifteen of them on the go. I don't know how many of them will make the album, but I'm hoping most of them will, because they're all very different from each other and very representative of who we are right now."
For more of Elliott's That Metal Show interview, including memories of seeing T. Rex at the first concert he ever attended, watch the video above.
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