PHIL COLLEN Looks Back On DEF LEPPARD's 'Slang' Album: 'We Really Needed To Change Things And Shake Things Up'

In a new interview with the Thunder Underground podcast, DEF LEPPARD guitarist Phil Collen spoke about the band's latest single, "Rejoice". The track was released in late January ahead of DEF LEPPARD's return to Las Vegas for their "Def Leppard: Live at Caesars Palace The Las Vegas Residency" that kicked off on February 3. "Rejoice" is available via UMe now on all streaming platforms. Asked if "Rejoice" is representative of the material which will appear on DEF LEPPARD's next album, Phil said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Yeah, that's one style of a song that's on there. There's some stuff on there that's, like, 'Whoa.' You'd go, 'This is really wacky.' And so I like that. I love the fact that we've kind of — not got brave, but we haven't got scared to express ourselves. And whoever writes whatever song, everyone puts 100% into it. So it kind of, again, takes on another life when you do that as well.'

He continued: "A lot of people, they write a song and they produce it and they do it exactly their way. This isn't like that. This is, like, someone writes a song and then everyone gets involved. It's really diplomatic and it's a democracy. But good ideas win. No one says stuff to justify it. And then we try it out. No, it's, it's great. So, yeah, we write all over the place on the latest DEF LEPPARD stuff, for sure."

During the same chat, Collen reflected on DEF LEPPARD's "Slang" album, which was first released in May 1996 and is considered the band's most underrated LP. At the time of its release, the music industry was at the height of the '90s grunge scene and DEF LEPPARD with bands like NIRVANA, STONE TEMPLE PILOTS and PEARL JAM were dominating the airwaves. Despite this musical shift, "Slang" charted on the Top Five U.K. official chart and the Top 15 in the U.S. on the Billboard 200 chart. The album was also voted in the Top Ten Albums Of 1996 by the U.K.'s prestigious Q magazine. As a testament to DEF LEPPARD's music transcending through time, "Slang" was recognized for its musical departure from the band's signature sound. The collection incorporated new sonic elements that gave the album a slightly darker introspective mood than their previous releases.

"When it came out, it kind of sucked, and I was going through a divorce at the time. And so that sucked," Phil recalled. "And then you're writing lyrics that are kind of influenced by that. And so there was a lot of stuff going on, but I love how it turned out, you know? It... And we had to do that. We had three albums. We had 'Pyromania', 'Hysteria' and 'Adrenalize' that were of an ilk. And Steve [Clark, DEF LEPPARD guitarist] had passed away, so we really needed to change things and shake things up. It wasn't a commercial success or anything, but it went gold, which is pretty good. But it was different. It had a spirit of its own. We've been playing [the] 'Slang' [title track] on tour now, and it's so much fun. We do an extended part in the middle, and it goes into this whole funk thing, and it would be James Brown and David Bowie, and it's all of this really weird stuff. So, no, I love that. Again, diversity is the key for me. I love it."

Asked if it took him a little bit of time to warm to "Slang" considering what he was going through on a personal level during the period that the album was being made, Collen said: "I think with music and art in general, it's a great valve. I never had teenage angst as a kid. I grew up in the East End of London, and my buddies at school, some of these kids were really getting into awful trouble, and I didn't. These were my buddies, and they would be doing stuff, and I'd be, like, getting into the music, and that was my release. So I think that even with that, I look back fondly at the recording of it because it allowed me to not really concentrate on being morose or anything and just releasing and kind of experiment and having a great time with music and expression. And that was pretty cool."

"Slang" debuted at No. 5 on The Billboard 200 and went gold, but was DEF LEPPARD's slowest-selling album in more than a decade.

"Y'know, I think we could've put out 'Sgt. Pepper's' or 'Dark Side Of The Moon' and I think it would have been the same because it was DEF LEPPARD and we had gotten lumped in with all the crap metal bands of the '80s that were kind of pale versions of us," Collen explained to Billboard.com more than a decade ago. "NIRVANA had come along and everything had changed. What was very interesting was people said they didn't like it so much because it didn't sound like us, but we set up in a villa in southern Spain and pretty much recorded live, so it was actually closer to the mark than the other albums where we didn't play live and did the usual studio thing of putting one thing on at a time and building it from there."

In January 2025, DEF LEPPARD released a cover of Ben E. King's 1961 classic "Stand By Me". All proceeds from the song went to FireAid, which raises money for those impacted by the fires that swept through Los Angeles in January 2025.

DEF LEPPARD's version of the song is featured in the Netflix film "Bank Of Dave 2: The Loan Ranger", which was released in January 2025. The band can be seen performing the track before the credits.

DEF LEPPARD's "Just Like 73" single, featuring a guest guitar solo from RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE guitarist Tom Morello, was made available in June 2024.

DEF LEPPARD's 12th studio album, "Diamond Star Halos", came out in 2022. A year later, the band followed it up with "Drastic Symphonies", a collection of reimagining of some of DEF LEPPARD's greatest hits with London's Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at Abbey Road. The album spent 15 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Current Classical chart.

DEF LEPPARD was finally inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in March 2019 — 14 years after the British rockers first became eligible.