Released in 1981 Queen Greatest Hits, or Greatest Hits I as it's now known due to their continued success, is a compilation of Queen's classic early albums including A Day At The Races, News Of The World, Sheer Heart Attack to name but a few. The album contains 17 of their best tracks but they are perhaps not the best 17 if you get what I mean, I'll explain later.
For the newcomer to Queen (hey there must be someone out there who has never heard of them) I recommend this as a starting point in your journey through their many years of great music and what better start could there be than the first track on the album Bohemian Rhapsody.
Bohemian Rhapsody probably deserves a category on Ciao all of it's own and an opinion on it could go on forever with words like groundbreaking appearing any times. In recent years it has been voted in the top 2 best songs of all time in several polls (normally battling with Imagine
which I feel is an inferior song but that's a different debate) but it's not Queen's best song in my opinion (I'll reveal my own favourite shortly). It is however the most popular and hence it's status as a rock classic. It's almost like three songs rolled into one but it works and it works well. It will go down in history as the first song to go to number one twice and it deserves its place.
I digress however; it's not an opinion about Bohemian Rhapsody I must keep telling myself. I'm not going to go into every track as I could be here for an eternity. This is merely my opinion on the album as a whole.
Every time I hear Bohemian Rhapsody finish, no matter if it's on the radio, CD or TV my mind always follows on with the intro to the next song on the album, Another One Bites The Dust. With one of the most famous baselines ever, played with excellence by John Deacon (who incidentally also wrote the track), this is another Queen classic (aren't they all) and is my own particular favourite. It's simple but beautiful. No fantastic Brian May guitar solo, no outstanding Freddie Mercury vocals (Oh how we miss those vocals) and no fancy drumming from Roger Taylor this is Deacon's best moment by far. He doesn't often get the chance to shine but he does it so well here.
It's going to look a bit like I'm being lazy now but I'm not honest. The first two songs on the album are my favourite and Bohemian Rhapsody, and are the two I have most to say about. I'll skip through the rest of the album as it really speaks for itself. The songs on the album are not in chronological order but I'll go through them as they appear.
The album continues with Killer Queen, one of their earliest songs, Fat Bottomed Girls, they make the rockin' world go round apparently, Bicycle Race, You're My Best Friend, Don't Stop Me Now (my second favourite song on the album) and Save Me. On Vinyl this was the end of side one but as I now have the CD I shall continue. Song 9 is Crazy Little Thing Called Love, a very groovy tune with an excellent video, Somebody To Love, which was given a decent working over by George Michael, Now I'm Here, another early track, Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy, Play The Game, Flash (probably the worst song on the album), Seven Seas Of Rhye, We Will Rock You, I'll spare you my thoughts on the recent cover due to the fact that children may read this, and finally the album finishes with one of the best songs to end on namely We Are The Champions.
Now back to an earlier point. In my opinion there are 16 great tracks on the album and there's also Flash. Flash is an okay song but it does not deserve a place on this album when so many other good songs missed out, for example Tie Your Mother Down, Spread Your Wings, Love Of My Life (all of which appeared on the accompanying video), Stone Cold Crazy, Shear Heart Attack, the list could go on for some time but you get the idea. This however is the only downside to what is otherwise an excellent compilation album.
To wrap up, Queen Greatest Hits is the best of the 3 such compilations that exist today and I thoroughly recommend getting hold of a copy. Whether you are a die-hard fan or a newcomer to the ways of Queen you can't help but love this album.
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Great review. Great CD. An absolute classic that will never date.
Littleswamp1 23.03.2005 22:48
You are obviously a Queen fan, like me! Need to copy this onto tape to play in my ancient car!!!
EnglishPatient 21.03.2001 01:33
Was playing this in the car only yesterday. As for the missing hits, perhaps some of that is down to the limited space available on vinyl LPs back in 1981...60 minutes was the maximum without surrendering sound quality, I think. Of course, they could have added some more selections when issuing the CD, but maybe they wanted to keep it the way it originally was. Pity EMI had to scrape the barrel so shamelessly for Greatest Hits 3. Totally unnecessary. I and II, though, are supreme collections.
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