BRUCE DICKINSON Releases Award-Winning New Video For His Classic Solo Song 'Tears Of The Dragon'

In September 2025, after performing at The Town festival in São Paulo, Brazil, IRON MAIDEN singer Bruce Dickinson joined with directors Leo Liberti and Antoine de Montremy to shoot an epic new film to accompany his reworking of the classic track "Tears Of The Dragon", which is featured on last year's reworked version of his classic 1994 solo album "Balls To Picasso", now titled "More Balls To Picasso".

Taking over a disused brewery in São Paulo with a full film crew, Bruce and his HOUSE BAND OF HELL were accompanied by the Almai orchestra, conducted by Antonio Teoli, to create a dramatic video for the beloved song. Teoli and the orchestra featured in the studio re-recording of the track, adding a whole new dimension to the atmospheric ballad.

Their performance in the video, alongside Bruce and Brazilian ballet dancer Renata Bardazi, has created a striking and emotionally charged film that has already been shown at a number of film festivals around the world, resulting in prestigious nominations and awards. It has now been released and is available to watch below.

Bruce comments: "When we reimagined the whole 'More Balls To Picasso' album, we always wanted to do an orchestral version of 'Tears Of The Dragon'. Antonio Teoli scored it and we recorded it, then we called up the filmmaker Leo Liberti who previously shot a load of live stuff for me in Brazil that was fabulous. We found this amazing location, an enormous old-school brewery that was almost like a renaissance building, and we made up the orchestra so they looked slightly zombified. All the HOUSE BAND OF HELL band members are in the video and I gave them all instruments to play. The whole thing was brilliant madness. Leo also came up with the idea of having a ballet dancer interpreting the song, and she was amazing, poetic, and that adds an incredible extra-emotional dimension to the video."

The new video has already won "Best Music Video" at a host of international film festivals, with further official nominations awaiting results. They are:

"Tears Of The Dragon" video 2026 awards:

Los Angeles Film Festival IAF - Best Music Video
Los Angeles Film Awards - Best Music Video
New York International Film Awards - Best Music Video
Eastern Europe Film Festival - Best Music Video
Sweden Luleå International Film Festival - Best Music Video
World Premiere Films Awards - Best Music Video / Best Editing
Asian Independent Film Festival - Best Music Video
Berlin Music Video Awards - Bronze

2026 Nominations:

Cannes Film Awards
Cannes World Film Festival
International Sound & Film Festival
Rome Prisma Film Awards
Tokyo Lift-Off Film Festival
Filmmaker Sessions
New York Short Cinema Awards

In an August 2025 interview with Full Metal Jackie's nationally syndicated radio show, Bruce spoke about the reworked version of "Balls To Picasso". Newly enhanced and expanded, it was described by Dickinson as a "reimagined" version of the original LP, which charted at number 21 in the U.K. The collection includes a pair of previously unreleased live-in-the-studio bonus tracks, as well as the original album track listing — albeit with updated performances, production treatments, and mixing. Bruce told Full Metal Jackie about the decision to revisit "Balls To Picasso" more than three decades later: "Well, we always felt that the album was never as heavy as it should have been, as it was intended to be. And that was 'cause we had so many different producers have their hands on it and everybody had different opinions and things like that. And I think it just kind of got lost in the mix, really, quite literally. But when the [record] label now, the one that [released my latest solo album] 'The Mandrake Project' and everything, when they said, 'Look, we wanna basically do the catalog and do it in Dolby Atmos and everything,' I said, 'Well, maybe we could take the opportunity of doing a bit of an upgrade on 'Balls To Picasso' and make it sound like the record it should have sounded like when we first put it out.' And so Brendan Duffey, who's done all the Atmos mixes and has been doing that for all of my solo catalog, Brendan, who mixed 'The Mandrake Project', said, 'Well, what do you wanna do?' And I said, 'Well, we wanna put some more guitars on it to beef it up.' 'Hey, let's see what else we can do with various percussion bits.' And then we looked at the orchestra for [the song] 'Tears Of The Dragon' and also for 'Change Of Heart'. And then we just went, 'Well, let's just go for broke. Let's put a horn section on 'Shoot All The Clowns'.' So he called his buddies at Berklee College Of Music, his two professors, 'cause he was doing a PhD in music by correspondence whilst he was getting his five Grammys for doing something else. So, he said, 'Oh, they're really, really big fans, man. They really wanna do it.' One's a trombone guy, one's a trumpet guy, and they put this horn section together for 'Shoot All The Clowns', which, it's just devastating; it's fantastic. So it is really a — it's an eclectic record to begin with, but it's now a much deeper, darker and heavier eclectic record."

In 1994, having left IRON MAIDEN for a time (he rejoined in 1999),Bruce released his second solo album, "Balls To Picasso". Named in honor of the cubist pioneer whose representations of spherical objects were as squares, and reflected on the cover in graffiti style on a tiled bathroom wall, the album belied its irreverent title by solidifying Dickinson's reputation as a serious solo artist.

His first record with collaborator Roy "Z" Ramirez, and recorded with Z's band TRIBE OF GYPSIES, it went through various iterations before its release, produced by Shay Baby. The original album contained a number of classic tracks and live favorites from Dickinson, including the singles "Tears Of The Dragon" and "Shoot All The Clowns", alongside the much-loved epic "Laughing In The Hiding Bush", which was the original title for the album.

Yet despite its positive reception at the time, it never quite captured Dickinson's original vision which was even more expansive in scope and ambition. However, with the ability to revisit his solo catalog — and following on from Dickinson's hugely acclaimed album "The Mandrake Project" in 2024 — the brand new part re-recorded, remixed and newly mastered version of the album, now titled "More Balls To Picasso", reimagines it as a fresh and contemporary release; a roaringly full-throttle and ambitious collection of supremely crafted and realized songs.

Additionally, "More Balls To Picasso" includes two previously unreleased live-in-the-studio tracks, "Gods Of War" and "Shoot All The Clowns". It is available as a splatter vinyl double album and tri-panel digisleeve CD album.

Photo credit: Marcos Vinicius Troian