Roger Taylor released Fun on Earth in the UK on November 11, 2013. His fifth solo studio album followed 1998’s Electric Fire, ending a 15-year gap between solo albums. Recorded at Priory Studios in Surrey, its 13 songs gave the Queen drummer room for personal writing, humour and a collaboration with Jeff Beck that grew out of a rehearsal.
“Sunny Day” led the release campaign. BBC Radio 2 presenter Chris Evans premiered it in September 2013 and played it twice in succession. The song also received an official music video, released through Queen’s official YouTube channel that November.
The album had developed gradually. Speaking to 20 minutos in December 2013, Taylor traced work on its songs back to 2008. He’d accumulated material over the intervening years, allowing the songs to develop naturally, and was pleased that each sounded different from the last. That independence mattered to him. While Queen remained fundamental to his musical life, his solo work gave him a part of his career that belonged to him personally.
Taylor could fit those sessions around his other commitments because he had a studio at home. As he explained to BANG Showbiz in October 2013, he worked on the record between Queen projects. He also described the title as a return to the idea behind his 1981 solo debut, Fun in Space: “I wanted to bring things back down here.”
There was room to laugh at his own place in a band, too. In Record Collector’s Christmas 2013 interview, Taylor described “I Am The Drummer (In A Rock 'n' Roll Band)” as a comedy song, turning the familiar drummer joke into a claim that he did all the work. Elsewhere, an instrument connected the album to his Queen songwriting: “Up” used the same analogue synthesizer he’d played on “Radio Ga Ga.” The album also included an abridged “The Unblinking Eye,” which he described in that interview as a response to Britain’s economic troubles, shop closures and political mismanagement.
For “Say It’s Not True,” Taylor revisited a song that Queen + Paul Rodgers had released as a single in 2007. He recorded a new version with Beck for Fun on Earth, and the guitarist helped choose the material. Taylor told Jane Stevenson in a December 2013 Canoe interview that Beck picked the song while they were rehearsing for a charity show. They recorded it during those rehearsals, and the album performance was the third take. “He can only be him when you hear the guitar,” Taylor said of his friend.
The release also arrived alongside a much broader look at Taylor’s work outside Queen. The Lot collected his five solo albums and the three albums he’d made with The Cross, together with four CDs of singles material and a DVD. Including Fun on Earth placed the new songs beside the earlier records, while the physical box offered an expanded version of the album with two additional tracks.
Those extra songs, “Dear Mr. Murdoch” and “Whole House Rockin’,” carried over to the limited double picture-disc edition issued for Record Store Day in April 2014. Taylor also rearranged the running order for vinyl. The resulting 15-track edition changed both the contents and sequence of the original album, carrying the expanded version beyond the box set.
