By any measurement, Def Leppard have enjoyed an extremely successful 2022.
The Sheffield hard rock quintet's triumphant co-headline stadium tour with Motley Crue shifted an impressive 1,313, 207 tickets across 35 North American shows, and their twelfth studio album, Diamond Star Halos, crashed into the Top 10 in both the UK and US... and has just been announced as Classic Rock magazine's Album Of The Year.
In a new interview in Classic Rock, frontman Joe Elliott admits that citing 2022 as a good year for the band would be "an understatement", and also reveals that his band are already started work on the follow-up to Diamond Star Halos.
In the interview with Classic Rock's Paul Elliott - no relation - the 63-year-old singer is asked to nominate his own personal album of the year.
"There’s a few," he responds. "Eddie Vedder’s Earthling, The White Lies [As I Try Not To Fall Apart], the Von Hertzen Brothers [Red Alert In The Blue Forest]… and – shock, horror! – I like the Jethro Tull album [The Zealot Gene].
"But the one that rocks harder than anything else I’ve heard this year is Demi Lovato’s album Holy Fvck. The riffs are fantastic and her singing is off the fucking charts!"
Lovato too will surely look back on 2022 with fond memories.
In an interview with Rolling Stone in February, Lovato, who came out as non-binary in May last year, promised that they'd return with a "heavy" new album.
"And when I say heaviness, I don’t mean lyrically," they stressed, "but heaviness as in some of the sound that I haven’t done before, which is exciting."
True to their word, the 30-year-old pop star who first shot to fame alongside Joe Jonas in Disney's Camp Rock/Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam, launched Holy Fvck with grungey lead-off single Skin Of My Teeth, which references Lovato's battles with drug addiction. "Demi leaves rehab again / When is this shit gonna end," they sing in the song's opening line, "Sounds like the voice in my head / I can’t believe I’m not dead."
Like Diamond Star Halos, Holy Fvck debuted in the Top 10 in both America and the UK.
Lovato later recruited guitarist Nita Strauss for her live band, saluting the former Alice Cooper guitarist "for being such a bad-ass rock guitarist in a male-dominated field."
