Def Leppard frontman Joe Elliott has shared new details regarding the band’s upcoming studio album, promising a collection of music that will “surprise a lot of people.” The singer recently discussed the group’s latest single, “Rejoice,” which debuted earlier this year as part of their high-profile residency at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
The new single, currently available via UMe, serves as the first taste of a full-length record expected to arrive in early 2027. Speaking with Riff X‘s “Metal XS,” Joe Elliott explained why the band chose their Vegas residency to introduce the world to their new material.
“It’s an opening song, for sure. Basically, it’s the first song that we’ve released from our upcoming new album, which will be out early next year. But because we had the residency in Vegas, we just thought it was a great opportunity to introduce some new music to that particular show. It was gonna be really spectacular,” he said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).
The residency, titled “Def Leppard: Live at Caesars Palace,” ran through February 2026 at The Colosseum. For the band, the stationary nature of a Vegas show allowed for a more theatrical and experimental approach to their setlist compared to a traditional world tour.
“Caesars Palace is a fantastic place to showcase a band like us,” he continued. “There’s something about doing a residency that opens your mind to the setlist. It’s different to touring. So as well as bringing back songs like ‘White Lightning‘, which we haven’t played for 33 years, and changing the set around and just rearranging it and making it more theatrical, because you are in Vegas, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to open with ‘Rejoice‘, because the great thing about the gig at Caesars Palace is the stage sinks down, so you can come up like a boy band. And so dry ice and all that lot. And the drum loop, we can extend it at the front of the song so it gets the crowd going. It’s very tribal. So it was a brilliant spot to play a new song. And it’s one of the greatest places to do a new song as the opening tune because everybody’s so excited that you’re coming on. It’s really not that important what you’re playing as long as it’s not an acoustic ballad or something. So ‘Rock! Rock! (Till You Drop)‘ would have worked fine, but ‘Rejoice‘ worked better because it’s a new song.”
The singer noted that using a new track as an opener was a psychological move to prove Def Leppard remains a contemporary force rather than a purely nostalgia-driven act.
“So it’s a psychological thing of we’re still a current band. We’re not just a legacy artist that’s just playing a greatest-hits set. We wanted to change it up. And the song itself is a very uplifting song.”
The creation of “Rejoice” happened with surprising speed between Joe Elliott and guitarist Phil Collen. According to the singer, the two were working on different parts of the track independently before realizing they fit together perfectly.
“I mean, when I said to Phil [Collen, Def Leppard guitarist], ‘Look, I’ve written this lyric that starts off with ‘I’m bored with boredom. I’m sick of all this flack.’ It’s very much somebody that’s in a bad place that wants to go somewhere better, hence the chorus being ‘I wanna go higher.’ And I said, ‘We need something that’s got a really cool drum loop and it’s got to be mid-tempo. You got anything?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, as it happens, I do.’ And he sent me the backing track, and I went, ‘This is perfect.’ And we worked it, and we wrote that song probably in half a day, because all the parts were there. He’d already written his bit, unbeknownst to me, and I’d written the lyrics, unbeknownst to him. And when we told each other we had a song — boom. It doesn’t always work that quick. You get one song per album [where] that works, and then the others are hard work,” he explained.
Looking toward the full album, fans can expect a departure from the standard rock formula. Joe Elliott teased that the band has recorded their fastest track to date, alongside slower, piano-driven songs inspired by Queen and Elton John.
“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 said. “But I will say this much: 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 Symphonies stuff. People shouldn’t be too surprised that our music works in those environments.”
He added: I think we’ve written the fastest song that we’ve ever recorded, and things in between. So 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 announcement of the new record follows a busy period for the 2019 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees. In early 2025, the band released a cover of “Stand By Me” by Ben E. King to benefit FireAid, following the devastating fires in Los Angeles. The track was also featured in the Netflix film “Bank of Dave 2: The Loan Ranger“.
In other positive news, guitarist Vivian Campbell revealed in June 2025 that he is in full remission from Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Vivian Campbell, who has been with Def Leppard since 1992 following his work with Dio and Whitesnake, had undergone multiple rounds of chemotherapy and stem cell transplants since his initial diagnosis in 2013. His return to full health has been a major highlight for the band as they prepare to launch this new musical chapter.
