Published: August 22, 2026 · 12:26 PM EDT
The Iron Maiden vocalist revisits his 1994 Balls To Picasso ballad through More Balls To Picasso in a new São Paulo video directed by Leo Liberti and Antoine de Montremy exploring innocence, alienation and the human condition
Iron Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson has released a new official music video for the reimagined version of “Change Of Heart,” returning to a song originally recorded for his 1994 solo album Balls To Picasso.
The new video premiered on August 20, 2026 and accompanies the reworked version of the song included on More Balls To Picasso, Dickinson’s 2025 reconstruction of his second solo album.
Filmed in São Paulo, Brazil in September 2025, the video was directed by Leo Liberti and Antoine de Montremy.
Dickinson performs in an abandoned location in the city alongside guitarist Philip Näslund, while a separate narrative develops around images of modern life, deterioration, suffering, disconnection and the persistent possibility of renewal.
At the center of the visual concept is a child carrying an image by English poet and artist William Blake.
For Dickinson, that choice is directly connected to ideas that have repeatedly appeared throughout his own creative work.
Dickinson said the idea for the new “Change Of Heart” video developed while he was in Brazil filming the reimagined version of “Tears Of The Dragon.”
“This song has always been very special to me,” Dickinson said of “Change Of Heart.”
The singer believes the new arrangement created for More Balls To Picasso strengthened both the message and emotional weight of the original composition.
Rather than creating another conventional performance video, Dickinson and the filmmakers built the visual narrative around themes of innocence and experience, freedom and spiritual enslavement, consciousness and alienation.
Those ideas led directly to the use of William Blake.
Dickinson explained that Blake repeatedly explored those tensions in his work and acknowledged that similar questions have also appeared throughout his own writing and artistic interests.
A young boy carrying the Blake image moves through the video as an observer.
According to Dickinson, the child represents a form of basic human awareness - the ability to recognize things that adults can gradually learn to overlook.
The artwork carried by the child is identified in the video’s promotional material as The Good and Evil Angels, a work associated with William Blake’s exploration of opposing spiritual and psychological forces.
Its inclusion is deliberate rather than decorative.
Dickinson has long demonstrated an interest in literature, history, philosophy and symbolism alongside his work in heavy metal, and the imagery in “Change Of Heart” provides another example of those interests becoming part of his music.
The video places the child and Blake image against scenes representing a society that is often distracted or disconnected from suffering occurring directly around it.
The child does not intervene or provide a solution. Instead, he observes. That visual role reinforces one of Dickinson’s central ideas for the film: that awareness itself can disappear as people become accustomed to disorder, pain or alienation.
The contrast also gives “Change Of Heart” a broader context than a traditional music video built only around the performer and song.
The video was filmed in São Paulo in September 2025, during the same period in which Dickinson worked with directors Leo Liberti and Antoine de Montremy on the reimagined “Tears Of The Dragon” video.
For “Change Of Heart,” Dickinson appears with Philip Näslund, the Swedish guitarist who also contributed additional guitar work to More Balls To Picasso.
The pair perform inside an abandoned urban location while the narrative moves outside the performance setting into scenes intended to represent contemporary social disconnection.
The filmmakers use the deteriorating environment as more than scenery.
It becomes part of the song’s visual language, placing ideas of decline and suffering alongside images suggesting that life continues to search for opportunities to begin again.
“Change Of Heart” first appeared as the sixth track on Balls To Picasso, released in 1994.
The record was Dickinson’s second solo studio album and his first solo album released after leaving Iron Maiden in 1993. He would eventually return to Iron Maiden in 1999. The album also marked the beginning of Dickinson’s long creative relationship with guitarist Roy Z.
Recorded with musicians from Roy Z’s Tribe Of Gypsies, the original album was produced by Shay Baby and included songs that became major pieces of Dickinson’s solo catalog.
Among them were “Tears Of The Dragon,” “Shoot All The Clowns,” “Cyclops,” “Laughing In The Hiding Bush,” “Gods Of War” and “Change Of Heart.”
“Change Of Heart” was written by Bruce Dickinson and Roy Z.
The original recording featured Dickinson on vocals, Roy Z on guitar, Eddie Casillas on bass, David Ingraham on drums and Doug Van Booven on percussion.
More than 30 years after the original record appeared, Dickinson decided that Balls To Picasso deserved another treatment.
The idea developed while his solo catalog was being prepared for Dolby Atmos.
During that process, Dickinson said he felt a persistent desire to return to the album and bring it closer to the larger and heavier vision he originally had for the material.
The result was More Balls To Picasso, released on July 25, 2025 through Sanctuary Records Group/BMG.
This was not simply a new remaster. Parts of the album were re-recorded, rearranged, remixed and newly mastered. Philip Näslund added new guitar work, while Brazilian composer Antonio Teoli contributed orchestral arrangements and additional musical elements across the project.
The album was mixed by Brendan Duffey, who had previously worked with Dickinson on The Mandrake Project, with input from original Balls To Picasso producer Shay Baby.
The intention was not to erase the 1994 album but to revisit decisions Dickinson had been thinking about for decades.
Rockum has documented the development of More Balls To Picasso since Dickinson first announced the project in June 2025.
Read: Bruce Dickinson Announces More Balls To Picasso - Classic 1994 Album Revisited And Reinvented
That announcement established the purpose behind the project: Dickinson wanted another opportunity to realize ideas that he felt were never fully represented on the original album.
A month later, Rockum also covered the reimagined version of “Cyclops,” another song from the 1994 record.
Read: Bruce Dickinson Releases Reimagined Version of Cyclops From More Balls To Picasso
The arrival of the “Change Of Heart” video continues that process more than a year later, showing that the campaign surrounding the rebuilt album has developed beyond the initial 2025 release.
Dickinson’s return to Balls To Picasso is also part of a wider reassessment of his solo catalog.
In February 2026, Rockum examined the new Dolby Atmos editions of Tattooed Millionaire and Skunkworks, two other important albums from his career outside Iron Maiden.
Together, the Atmos work and More Balls To Picasso show Dickinson treating his solo catalog as material that can still be reconsidered rather than simply preserved unchanged.
That distinction is particularly important with Balls To Picasso.
Instead of only remastering the existing tapes, Dickinson returned to individual musical elements and actively changed the record.
MORE BALLS TO PICASSO - TRACKLIST
01. Cyclops
02. Hell No
03. Gods Of War
04. 1000 Points Of Light
05. Laughing In The Hiding Bush
06. Change Of Heart
07. Shoot All The Clowns
08. Fire
09. Sacred Cowboys
10. Tears Of The Dragon
11. Gods Of War - Live In The Studio
12. Shoot All The Clowns - Live In The Studio
The final two tracks were previously unreleased live-in-the-studio recordings when More Balls To Picasso was announced.
The album was issued on double splatter vinyl and as a tri-panel digisleeve CD, alongside its digital release.
CHANGE OF HEART - REIMAGINED VERSION CREDITS
Bruce Dickinson - Vocals
Roy Z - Guitar, songwriting
Philip Näslund - Guitar
Eddie Casillas - Bass
David Ingraham - Drums
Doug Van Booven - Percussion
Antonio Teoli - Keyboards / additional arrangements
The reimagined material on More Balls To Picasso was mixed by Brendan Duffey, with the album rebuilt around the original recordings and newly added musical elements.
The new “Change Of Heart” video is closely connected with another song from Balls To Picasso.
Dickinson and the same filmmaking team also created a new visual interpretation of “Tears Of The Dragon” in São Paulo.
That production involved Dickinson’s House Band Of Hell, the Almai Orchestra conducted by Antonio Teoli and Brazilian ballet dancer Renata Bardazi.
The resulting film was subsequently shown at international film festivals and received multiple awards.
While “Tears Of The Dragon” uses orchestral performance and dance as major visual elements, “Change Of Heart” approaches its subject differently.
The new film focuses more heavily on observation, urban decay, social alienation and the symbolic presence of the child carrying Blake’s artwork.
Together, the two videos extend the concept of More Balls To Picasso beyond audio.
Dickinson is not only altering how the songs sound; he is giving selected tracks entirely new visual identities more than three decades after they were written.
Dickinson’s solo catalog has always existed alongside - but separately from - his work with Iron Maiden.
That distinction became particularly clear during the 1990s, when his departure from Maiden allowed him to experiment with musicians and approaches that did not necessarily need to fit the identity of the band he had fronted since the early 1980s.
Balls To Picasso introduced the Roy Z collaboration that would later become central to acclaimed Dickinson albums including Accident Of Birth, The Chemical Wedding and Tyranny Of Souls.
His return to Iron Maiden in 1999 did not end that parallel career.
Decades later, projects including The Mandrake Project and the reconstruction of Balls To Picasso show Dickinson continuing to treat his solo work as an independent creative catalog rather than simply an extension of Iron Maiden.
The William Blake imagery in “Change Of Heart” reinforces that distinction.
The video places Dickinson’s literary and philosophical interests at the center of the presentation, using the song as a vehicle for questions about consciousness and how people respond to the world around them.
The new video for “Change Of Heart” demonstrates why Bruce Dickinson’s return to Balls To Picasso has become more than a conventional catalog reissue.
The song began as part of his second solo album in 1994, during one of the most uncertain and creatively important transitions of his career.
Three decades later, Dickinson did not simply remaster that recording and leave it untouched. He rebuilt the album around new guitars, arrangements, mixes and additional performances, then continued developing selected songs through ambitious visual projects. “Change Of Heart” now has another identity.
Its São Paulo video connects the 1994 composition with William Blake, contemporary images of alienation and a recurring question in Dickinson’s work: what people see, what they stop seeing and what happens when awareness is lost.
For an artist whose career is usually introduced with the words Iron Maiden, projects like this continue to document a much larger creative history.
Written by Gino Alache – Music Journalist
IMAGE CREDIT: Marcos Vinicius Troian
Watch Bruce Dickinson’s “Change Of Heart (Reimagined Version)” official music video below:
