‘Who Wants To Live Forever’ is the most successful duet in the Queen canon, as May and Mercury trade verses in their effort to reach self-forgiveness. More happily, the title track exudes invention, ‘Don’t Lose Your Head’ shows the vibrancy and the anthemic ‘Friends Will Be Friends’ is ram-shackled good fun. It doesn’t help that the metal numbers – ‘Princes of The Universe’ and ‘Gimme The Prize’ – are awful, and May is strangely underutilised on the sickly ‘One Year of Love’ (which is likely due to a growing rift between him and songwriter John Deacon).
#Queen full discography series#
Out of the trilogy of albums Queen churned out in an effort to absolve themselves from their actions on Hot Space, A Kind of Magic is the laziest and definitely the least interesting, embellishing the hits with a series of meandering vignettes that offer nothing of resonance or aphorism to the world.
A Kind of Magic (1986)īy the 1980s, Queen had gotten into the lazy habit of basing whole albums around the jangly singles that would make their way into the setlist. This leaves guitarist Brian May to anchor the album, and he does so fairly nicely, pivoting from the introspective wonders of ‘The Night Comes Down’, to the anthemic qualities that centre ‘Doin’ Alright’. ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ and ‘Liar’ are the highlights, but the album also closes on an instrumental version of ‘Seven Seas of Rhye’, which makes for an interesting curio next to the fleshed-out rocker.ĭeacon doesn’t contribute to the record, Mercury’s songs are largely flimsy, and Taylor tries to emulate Led Zeppelin on ‘Modern Times Rock ‘n’Roll’, and fails. In that regard, Queen II is more of a makeover than a sequel, and whatever failings heard on the first album (and there are many) are wiped away because of the second work. Queen’s first album isn’t necessarily a bad one, but it’s deeply unfocused, and done with trepidation, as the band tip their toes into the waters of esoteric rock, but lack the courage to plunge themselves in completely. Mercifully, the sessions did produce ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’, the urgent, turbo-charged stomper that still holds a place on British radio. It’s the closest thing the band had to a White Album, although few of the songs are worthy of a place on The Beatles’ opus. The album is nauseatingly arrogant, so it’s no surprise that the majority of the band wound up distancing themselves from the finished results. He’s the only one showing gratitude, as the others take it upon themselves to critique the girth of their American fans (‘Fat Bottomed Girls’) or to lampoon the trappings an organised religion was founded on (‘Mustapha’). If anyone shows humility, it’s John Deacon, who boasts the charmingly whimsical ‘In Only Seven Days’, a piano piece that shows the bassist bowled over by the gifts the world has offered him.
It’s the most overblown, over-produced and over-sexed album in the entire Queen canon, showing little of the band’s talents. If there was ever a justification for punk, Jazz was it. Ranking every Queen album from worst to best: 15. Indeed, they only released one out and out dud of a record during their 20-year tenure- all in good time. But what a list it is, showing 15 complete works that hold their head up in the Queen canon.
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