Bruno Major went looking for himself and found a car named Columbo. Or maybe he found an existential black hole. Or maybe he found both. Whatever it was, the result is Columbo, his most ambitious album yet — a record so honest it nearly broke him, but not quite enough to stop him from pulling Brian May guitar nods, Bach chorales, and simulation theory into one shimmering, lonely whole.
“Look, I always compare myself to the greatest — Billy Joel, Leonard Cohen, Randy Newman,” Major says, half-joking, half-ready to die on that hill. “If I don’t get there, I’ll be severely upset.”
Cue the part where the universe hits pause. “COVID happened,” he shrugs. “I was supposed to be on tour, being the rock star version of myself I’d invented. Instead, I was at my parents’ house in Northampton eating ham sandwiches. Who the fuck am I when I’m not the guy on stage?”
Turns out he’s the guy who flies to L.A., buys an old Mercedes, and drives around until the songs appear like ghosts. “I just drank all the drinks, loved all the loves, felt all the feelings,” he laughs. The result was the most prolific six months of his life — and, for a while, a descent into artistic lunacy. “I definitely lost my marbles. I convinced myself an Uber driver was kidnapping me and made my manager pick me up off the side of the highway at four in the morning. That’s the upside-down, man.”
Columbo channels all of that: the jazz kid who worshipped Chopin, the guitar nerd who never stopped loving Brian May. Queen’s fingerprints are all over the album, intentional or not. “Brian May is one of the greatest. His solos are like Chopin nocturnes on top of rock music,” Major says. He even accidentally named a track The Show Must Go On. “I didn’t know there was a Queen song called that! But yeah — the guitar parts, the vocal layers, they’re there. I didn’t run from it.”
Don’t let the classic rock touchstones fool you — Bruno’s still out there on the edge, asking the questions most of us drown out with social media dopamine. “AI is the universe waking up for the first time,” he muses. “We are the plankton, the Earth is the womb. Our purpose is to create AI. It’s bigger than the wheel, bigger than fire.”
If that sounds like the beginning of the artist-loses-his-mind biopic, Major’s well aware. “I always imagined I’d make four albums. This one nearly killed me. I’d love to do another one, but I’m scared.” Then he grins, because of course he’ll do it again. That’s how you become immortal, right? A piece of soul in every record, drifting forever on radio waves, stardust out in space.
“The further you go out to sea, the bigger the fish are, but the further away from shore you get. That’s the deal,” he says. With Columbo, Bruno Major caught some monsters. And he’s still swimming.
Watch the interview above and then check out the video below.
