No matter how high you’re up on the ladder, there will always be others that are on your vision board. What do I mean by that? Well, it’s human nature to compare ourselves and look up to others, so there will always be someone else, some other band that we admire or perhaps would love to have the chance to work with.
For Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott, even though he has achieved great success in his own right and the band has become a household name that most up-and-coming musicians look up to, the frontman also has names that he would have been overjoyed to collaborate with if he ever had gotten the chance. So let’s see Elliott’s two picks that he gave in a fan Q&A for the Sun in 2002.
Before Elliott gave his very opposite answers to two bands that he would have liked to work with, the vocalist gave some names that he thought wouldn’t be ideal as stage partners. He said, “Imagine Def Leppard and Christina Aguilera doing ‘We Are The World.’”
You can’t get two more different artists if you tried well; maybe you can, as Elliott added, “They can be forgivable sometimes when they are for charity. But then you hear the Elton John one with the opera singer, and you just think, “Oh, please.” Even if you admire the performer, there is some sort of line that you should stick to, especially when you know you can’t blend your talent; at least, it seems that way for the Def Leppard frontman.
When it came to the honest answers of his picks on the vision board, the first name was quite expected as most artists have them in their top-tier lists, and for a good reason. A pop band was a unique and bold choice for sure, and some would argue they wouldn’t work together as well, but the frontman apparently likes to surprise his fans.
He said, “If I could write with and perform with anyone, it would have to be the Rolling Stones or something shocking like the Backstreet Boys.” His first choice is a no-brainer, while the second pick is questionable, but maybe that’s the beauty of it. The unexpected might be the one that wows the audience more.
What do you think? In a parallel universe where Joe Elliott’s picks really came to fruition, would the collaboration with Backstreet Boys work, or would you prefer the one with Rolling Stones? Or do you have another pop band in mind that would have been a dream collaboration? It’s a tough call!
