For a guy who once kept time for the most bombastic band in rock history, Roger Taylor has no problem starting slow. His latest solo album Outsider opens with “Tides,” a gentle meditation on mortality that could double as the last rites of a man looking out at the ocean and reflecting on the ticking clock. But don’t mistake it for resignation. “More kicks, please,” he grins a track later, and just like that, the wheels are back on the rock-and-roll bus.
“I think everybody’s got a little bit of being an outsider in them,” Taylor says. “You can’t always be in every team.” And while Queen once ruled the stadiums, they did start as glam-rock oddballs in a denim-and-pub-rock world. “We weren’t exactly conforming to the norms of the day.”
Now in his seventies, Taylor’s not chasing youth but embracing reflection. “I wrote that by the sea,” he says of the album’s opener. “The only real constant is the tide. The weather isn’t. The rest of life isn’t. But the tide comes in and goes out. It’s reassuring and also... not.”
Still, Outsider isn’t just about death and waves. There's rebellion in “More Kicks,” heartbreak in “We’re All Just Trying to Get By,” and even some high-spirited hand-clapping on a retro cover of Shirley Ellis’s “The Clapping Song.” “That one was just for fun,” he shrugs. “I had this old drum kit, a Trixon Telstar, and it just sounded so 60s. Then I got some friends to put horns on it and swing the thing.”
Despite its moments of levity, the pandemic looms over Outsider like a ghost. Songs like “Isolation” are born directly from lockdown. “It was scary,” he recalls. “We didn’t know if we’d get food. We didn’t know when it would end. And I really felt for people locked up in one-room apartments.”
The song “We’re All Just Trying to Get By” isn’t some faux-inclusive Instagram slogan—it’s a universal mantra. “Every plant, every animal, even the COVID virus,” he says, “everything’s just trying to survive. It’s not deep science, but it’s true.”
But the album’s most pointed moment comes with “Gangsters Are Running This World,” released in two versions—a slinky melodic one and a harder-edged “purple version” that sounds like Taylor just watched the news and decided to throw a punch. “I believe that sentiment,” he says flatly. “At my age, I’m entitled to say what I think. And yes, we had our own gangster running things for a while.”
“Foreign Sand,” originally released in 1994 with Japanese pianist Yoshiki, is reimagined here as a stripped-down acoustic moment of clarity. “Why do we fear what we don’t know?” Taylor asks. “I just wanted to get to the kernel of that song. The message is simple. Don’t fear. Try and understand.”
Of course, there’s a little Queen business too. A solo tour was in the works, but so was the eternally-postponed European run with Queen + Adam Lambert. “We were really on a high in Australia and Japan when COVID hit,” he says. “We’d like to continue that high.”
As for Queen’s looming 50th anniversary, Taylor is comically reluctant. “Brian and I are trying to ignore it. It just makes us feel very old,” he deadpans. “But the fans want it, so…”
Even with one eye on the past, Roger Taylor isn’t content to coast. “Journey’s End,” the album’s final track, brings the whole reflective arc full circle. “Are we better off at the end?” he muses. “We’re sailing off into some mythical sunset… in a great mood.”
So, to recap: tides, claps, gangsters, pandemics, sunsets. And still—more kicks.
Watch the interview above and then check out the tracks below.
