Roger Taylor Talks What’s Next for Queen & the State of the World: ‘Without Being Too Rude, What Is Happening to America?’
Categoria: Musica
The multi-instrumentalist's new album, Violence Insane In a Beautiful World, takes a tough, honest look at our planet.
Por Billboard | 18/09/2026
All Queen ‘s Roger Taylor is saying on his latest solo album is to give peace a chance — and maybe kindness, too. Violence Insane In a Beautiful World, out on Friday (Sept. 18), is the multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter’s seventh album of his own; it comes five years after his last, Outsider, and 45 years since his first, Fun in Space. The 10-track set, recorded at Taylor’s home studio in the U.K. and co-produced with Joshua J. Macrae, takes its theme from the opening track, “A Beautiful World,” which extols the virtues of the planet while acknowledging the challenges of current times, ending with the warning “don’t f–k it up.” “It’s about how this is a beautiful world that we live in, and with all this terrible violence and everything let’s not screw it up,” the 77-year-old Taylor tells Billboard via Zoom from his studio. “It’s a very simple point, really, but a fairly important one. We’re in a bad state in most of the world at the moment — more wars, more needless deaths and insane violence. There are times when I despair for what we’re leaving our children, our grandchildren, but I hope it gets better.” The song “Spit In His Eye,” meanwhile, posits an attitude of defiance — “You can never surrender,” Taylor notes — while “Chump” is a direct shot at a certain U.S. president with a surname that rhymes with the title. “‘Chump’ is fairly self-evident, what it’s about,” Taylor acknowledges. “I mean, I hate to interfere with other countries’ politics, but… wow! Without being too rude, what is happening to America? It’s such a wonderful country, but it’s changing to the worse at the moment. [Trump] seems to be demolishing all the good things about it. The land of the free? Hmm, doesn’t seem like it from the outside. And it’s such a shame because we love America. It has so much to offer. Let’s hope it’s reversible.” Adding weight to “A Beautiful World” and a reprise version (“A Great Big Beautiful World”) at the end of the album is the Ndlovu Youth Choir from Limpopo, South Africa. Taylor saw a video of the troupe’s Zulu arrangement of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” and reached out to make it part of the two “Beautiful World” tracks as well as the dance club-flavored “Come on Summer (It’s Party Time).” “I was very smitten with them,” he recalls, “with these amazing costumes and fantastic choral arrangements and they were very happy to join me. It was really a two-way process; I would tell the choirmaster what I wanted and he almost telepathically provided it. They were very easy to work with, which made my life a lot easier.” The rest of Violence Insane — whose cover features a shot of the E