Jazz is under rated. Queen's albums were solid up to Jazz. then they allowed outside influences affect their music.
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Jazz is under rated. Queen's albums were solid up to Jazz. then they allowed outside influences affect their music.
The decline in quality is obvious after Night at the Opera. After this they became too sugary & aimed at the MTV market! !!
Yes that's right- the MTV that didn't start until 1981 and the same MTV that wouldn't show 'I Want To Break Free'.
I like Jazz more than NotW overall. The Game was a big step down for me though it had a couple good cuts like Dragon Attack and Play The Game.
Can you blame them, Mercury acts like in idiot. So ouf of sync of what Queen where renowned for. I have nothing againt Gays or transgenders but as Queen fans we didnt need Mercury's sexual preference shoving down our throats. He should have kept his private life to exactly that!!!
That video as got to go down as the most embarrassing of all time & I understand why the American public responded like they did!
First of all, I fixed your comment for ya.
Wait, when was Freddie ramming his sexual orientation down our throats? The idea for them to dress up in drag in the I Want To Break Free video actually came from, I believe, Roger's fiancee at the time. Freddie once commented that everyone assumed it was his idea, but "the others ran into their costumes faster than anything". Besides which, if we accept the stereotype of gay people as being into music hall, show tunes, camp, etc, then Freddie had been "ramming it down our throats" since day one. The camp element was always there, whether you cared to notice it or not.
Another point about I Want To Break Free that most Americans don't get is that they're actually lampooning Coronation Street, the long running soap opera. Each band member is dressed as a character from the show, which according Dr. May was something anyone in the UK would have picked up on (but obviously it didn't translate too well internationally, given that Coronation Street has, as far as I know, never been shown Stateside).
At any rate, every time I see that video, I can't help but crack up laughing when Freddie steps on camera with the Hoover. I'm sorry, the whole thing is too silly to not laugh at it, and I think that's what the band intended. Anyone who's sitting there going, "They've gone too far this time", is taking it waaaaaaaay too seriously.
And as far as embarrassing videos go, there's way worse things than that one. Hell, there's way worse things even in the Queen catalog, like Scandal (which I don't think was a very good song to begin with), Back Chat, Calling All Girls, and Body Language (though at least in BL, you still had the obvious humor element in there that kept it from being too serious).
Also, MTV did show I Want To Break Free, they just didn't give it the mass exposure they had given to Radio Ga-Ga or Under Pressure. If I remember correctly, they would only play it past a certain hour in the evening because they didn't want to offend any of the bigoted ninnies in the Midwest or South. Ya know, the same bunch of people they used as their excuse for not playing any black artists when they first went on the air (which only proved they had no comprehension of how American pop culture works).
Oh, and I don't think it was I Want To Break Free that killed their American following, so much as it was the entire direction the band's music took in the 80's. One thing I've noticed about American rock music fans is we tend to get uptight about stupid stuff. People were upset that they started using synths. People were upset that Hot Space had too much of an R&B influence. Americans don't like it when you experiment too much with your sound. Hell, I read once the American fans were upset even about Freddie growing a mustache!
I'm not sure how the Hot Space tour performed Stateside, but I remember hearing it said that the reason The Works and the Magic tours, didn't come to this country was because promoters got cold feet about booking the band into arenas. So they didn't tour here, so they weren't as omnipresent in the media as they would have been had they toured here, and hence, The Works didn't sell as well as it would have otherwise here.
And if there was a song that "killed" Queen's American audience, it was probably more likely Body Language. It did well in the dance clubs, but I can imagine a lot of fans hearing that and going, "enough is enough!". And having a video that literally couldn't be played on TV (well, there was nudity or anything, but the bumping and grinding pushed the envelope a bit, I think) probably didn't help things either.
Yeah, I think Queen's move into dance music and funk was what really killed their American audience.
The idea of Freddie ramming his sexual orientation 'down our throats' is too hilarious...the video wasn't his idea and the whole band was in drag. And Freddie's private life was indeed rigorously kept 'exactly that', as far as I'm aware!
RE; 'Hot Space' is not controversial for me because of the direction- it's one they'd done before with 'Another One Bites The Dust' and 'Dragon Attack'. It's that they didn't bring many decent songs, really...I think that's why 'Under Pressure' was tacked onto the end. There really wasn't a killer track on that...'Body Language' charted well enough in the US but there's barely a song there, IMHO. And *that* video is laughable!
One problem for me with the albums of this time is that the fillers start becoming obvious. 'Don't Try Suicide' for instance...one of the most bizarre songs I've heard, not in a 'wow this is weird' sense but in a 'what were they thinking' one.
The other theory as to why they did badly in the US during the 80s goes back to how some PR was handled by Freddie's personal manager of the time, Paul Prenter- who was not spoken of with any kind of fondness by anybody in that Freddie Mercury documentary from a few years ago.
Queen's musical "struggles" often came from trying to do too many things, IMO.
From the standpoint of diversity, they went further than Led Zeppelin, but the problem is that the premise of musical "diversity" can be fundamentally flawed. It's fine to experiment, but when you lose sight of your rawest, most organic attributes, you face the dilemma of it not aging very well even if it strikes as innovative, unique or just plain "fun" in its time. Zeppelin faces similar hiccups in their catalog, IMO.
Yeah, there was at least one interviewer who had figured out that Freddie was gay, and wanted to mention it in this one article, and Freddie is like, "Oh, no! You mustn't!". You can hear this on a tape that was used in one (or possibly more) of the documentaries when that topic came up.
I do agree there's filler on both The Game and Hot Space, but I think there's quite a few good songs on both records. The Game had Sail Away Sweet Sister, Save Me, Play The Game, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Prime Jive, Another One Bites The Dust, and Dragon Attack, off the top of my head. Hot Space had Action This Day, Staying Power, Calling All Girls, Life Is Real, Las Palabras Des Amour, Under Pressure, Back Chat, and Put Out The Fire.
But the filler goes back to the Jazz album, which had If You Can't Beat Them Join Them and Fun It. I suspect those songs only made it onto the record so that John and Roger each could have two songwriting credits (I guess they eventually figured out that would be part of the deal, that each of them would get to have two songs each on each album).
I think the problem was that after Another One Bites The Dust was such a huge hit Stateside, they were advised (either by management and/or record company) to "give us another Another One Bites The Dust". Roger said once that "We were sidetracked by the success of Another One Bites The Dust down a road that wasn't really Queen". And I think that hurt them Stateside, in the long run. It was one thing to do a funk style song once or twice, it was another when half or more of the next album played around with that sound.
The other thing was that they were trying to sound contemporary, hence the appearance of synths, drum machines and Simmons drums on the 80's era albums, and once again, a lot of fans, I think, wanted to the good old Queen they knew from the 70's era records. They didn't want the band's sound to evolve, or at least they didn't want to evolve so drastically as it did. Oh well, that's what happens sometimes.
I don't see Jazz as having filler, but just not a superior album in comparison. Half the album is great though in my estimation, so...beats Tormato. ;)
Same thing can be said about The Game and Hot Space. Though I actually like the song "Don't Try Suicide".
^With 'Don't Try Suicide', it's the lyrics that I find bizarre, rather than the music.
'The Game' is different from their big lavish 70s sound so it took me a while longer to warm to it...but I did. I've yet to do so with most of their other 80s albums, which do generally strike me as 'singles and filler'. Still a near-unbeatable singles act, though! Several of their songs are actually better in the single versions- 'I Want To Break Free' has that long intro not on the album, 'Hammer To Fall' is much tighter and 'I Want It All' has that acapella intro and again, the instrumental section is tighter.
Good point. I grew up with Queen in the 80s though, so my first exposure was songs like Another One Bites the Dust, Under Pressure, and Radio Ga Ga. "The Works" was one of the first albums I ever purchased, so I have a childhood tie to that album and A Kind of Magic especially. That said, I agree with your overall point. I wouldn't use the word 'filler', but most of the 80s albums are "half great/half meh" imo.
Many years later, I think the strongest album post 70s just might be Innuendo. Maybe because of the circumstances surrounding the recording of that album, but I think it has the strongest collection of tracks that are also the least dated.
As a Queen fan since '75 I never thought Freddie was trying to ram his sexuality down anyone's throat...I was just a teenager when I got into Queen and to me he was just being larger-than-life Freddie. I personally much preferred his (and the whole bands) early androgynous look and saw it as a perfect visual image to associate with a band called Queen. When Deacon moved to the short hair look around News of the World and Freddie followed suit soon after I was pretty shocked, but by then they'd already made a huge name for themselves so it didn't matter what they looked like :cool
I agree with you on both points. 'The Works' is certainly the most consistent of that period...a 'safe' Queen album but after 'Hot Space' that was perhaps needed. The songs chosen as singles do tower over the rest of it, though.
Also agree that 'Innuendo' was a definite improvement. Still some iffy material ('Delilah', 'All God's People') but quite a lot of good-to-great stuff too.
'Made In Heaven' was rather good too.
What the hell does the I Want to Break Free video have to do with Freddie's sexual preferences anyway? I don't remember there being any gay sex in it, nor have I ever heard that Freddie was into cross-dressing.
Freddie once said that he had to change his image, because he realized that as he got older, he'd have looked ridiculous if he continued with the long hair and the androgynous outfits, etc. He then paused, and said, "Well, I looked ridiculous, then, but at least it worked!".
I never did get Innuendo, which is why The Show Must Go On was the one song I didn't know the words to the second time I saw Almost Queen (a great Queen tribute band from NYC/NJ area, check 'em out if you get the chance). I've actually got a couple good stories to tell about those two shows that I saw from them, if anyone cares to hear them.
But getting back to talking about actual Queen, I never got Innuendo, The Works or A Kind Of Magic, though I've heard the singles off pretty much all of them at one point or another, most of which I think are pretty good. I know a lot of people don't like Radio Ga-Ga, but if you actually listen to the lyrics of that song, it's actually a very interesting commentary on what radio had devolved into (a process that has unfortunately continued to this day). And you have to admit, it's a lot of fun to do the handclaps during the choruses. And everytime I hear Freddie sing "So stick around/Cuz we might miss you", I get teary eyed, because I really do still miss him. Likewise, on Teo Torriatte, when he sings in the bridge, "When I'm gone...".
The Miracle is the only one of the later records I got. That's got some great songs on it, particularly The Miracle itself, I Want It All and Breakthru. I thought Scandal and The Invisible Man weren't very good, and to be honest, I don't actually remember much about the rest of the album. And once again, I thought the video of The Miracle was fantastic, with the boys playing the roles of the band members. I think Brian admitted that the boy playing him seemed to know the guitar parts better than he did, and the boy playing Freddie did a great job of mimicking his stage moves.
Something people forget about Freddie is he had a great sense of humor. There's one interview where the guy asks him what it's like to play in front of 100,000 people (or some ridiculous number like that, I forget what it was exactly) and Freddie looks into the camera and says "I haven't done it yet". There was another one where says he knows he's going to Hell when he dies, and reckons the people you'll meet will be much more interesting than those you'll meet in Heaven.
Then there's the whole, ridiculous over the top video for It's A Hard Life, which was apparently largely Freddie's concept. Brian said that Freddie had created this wonderful song about being lonely at the top, then he goes and makes this silly over the top video.
I think that's also where the opera thing is in Bohemian Rhapsody comes from, because without it, it's this oh so serious song about...well, who knows what it's actually about, but I think he intended that to be comic relief of sorts. Like he knew it it was too serious, and tossed that over the top opera thing in for laughs.
Dude, get Innuendo NOW. Very good album, probably my favorite since Jazz.
Ya, that's always one of the things I loved about Queen...for every serious "The Prophets Song" there was a "Seaside Rendezvous" or for a "The Show Must Go On" there was a "Delilah"...incredibly talented writers/players that weren't afraid to be heavy and silly at the same time :cool