Tim McGraw Guests on Def Leppard's "Sparkle Lounge"

Tim McGraw joins Def Leppard on “Nine Lives,” the first single from the band’s Songs From the Sparkle Lounge album, out March 18.

McGraw met the members of Def Leppard during a 2006 show at the Hollywood Bowl, when he sang “Pour Some Sugar on Me” with them.

“You know what these situations are like," Def Leppard singer Joe Elliott told me in an interview for USA Today. “They normally lead to a lot of what we like to call ‘rock and roll promises.’ I don’t know how many times I’ve heard the phrase ‘we should work together one day’ and it leads to nothing. Fair play to Tim, he came through, and when the opportunity arose, he was there.”

Elliott says “Nine Lives” is “kind of like a cross between ‘Armageddon It’ and ‘Honky Tonk Woman. It’s got a tinge of Stones-y country, as opposed to country country. I wouldn’t say it’s typical Leppard, by any means.”

“There are two or three songs that are what I would call ‘classic Leppard stuff,’” Elliott says. “They would’ve sat nicely on Hysteria or Pyromania.”

Other songs on Songs From the Sparkle Lounge include:

“Bad Actress” – “a humorous, mini-romp at the whole X Factor lifestyle,” Elliott says.

“Come Undone” – “a mid-tempo thing that’s sort of Zeppelin-esque.”

“Cruise Control” – “Very kind of anti-war, very much about the Iraq situation. We never like too push too hard on the political front, because it doesn’t really suit bands like us, but we have managed to express that we do have a bit of a brain with songs like ‘Gods of War.’” … where we can touch on stuff other than ‘Do you want to get rocked.’”

“Come On Come On” – “It’s just straight out of the glam-rock British hit singles in 1973. [Bassist Rick Savage] just went out there and wrote a Chinn & Chapman song. It’s Bowie, Sweet, T. Rex. It’s all that rolled into one.”