"A one-man calamity, catastrophe. No trace of sanity, an empty shell": Queen's Roger Taylor releases surprise protest song Chumps and doesn't pull his punches

By Fraser Lewry ( Classic Rock, Louder ) published 2 February 2026

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The mournful Chumps finds Taylor singing despairingly about "a man of no morality, of no more quality" over gentle washes of synthesiser, and demonstrating some excellent rhyming skills, partnering "treachery" with "lechery" and "pomposity" and "atrocities."

Taylor, who been happily neglecting to keep politics out of his music for several decades, has a history with this sort of thing.

In 2019, he released the state-of-the-nation address Gangsters Are Running This World, while his 1994 album Happiness included both Dear Mr. Murdoch – an attack on media mogul Rupert Murdoch – and the single Nazis 1994, a song railing against the rising tide of neo-Nazism. Dear Mr. Murdoch was subsequently updated in 2011 following the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. Taylor also covered John Lennon's protest song Working Class Hero on his 1998 album Electric Fire.