Queen Rogue Xxx

In every sense, A Day at the Races is an unapologetic sequel to A Night at the Opera, the 1975 breakthrough that established Queen as rock & roll royalty. The band never attempts to hide that the record is a sequel – the two albums boast the same variation on the same cover art, the titles are both taken from old Marx Brothers films and serve as counterpoints to each other. But even though the two albums look the same, they don't quite sound the same, A Day at the Races is a bit tighter than its predecessor, yet tighter doesn't necessarily mean better for a band as extravagant as Queen…

In every sense, A Day at the Races is an unapologetic sequel to A Night at the Opera, the 1975 breakthrough that established Queen as rock & roll royalty. The band never attempts to hide that the record is a sequel – the two albums boast the same variation on the same cover art, the titles are both taken from old Marx Brothers films and serve as counterpoints to each other…

Queen were straining at the boundaries of hard rock and heavy metal on Sheer Heart Attack, but they broke down all the barricades on A Night at the Opera, a self-consciously ridiculous and overblown hard rock masterpiece…

While writing and recording The Game, Queen were asked by renowned movie director Dino DeLaurentis to provide the soundtrack for his upcoming sci-fi epic Flash Gordon. The band accepted and promptly began working on both albums simultaneously…

Queen had long been one of the biggest bands in the world by 1980's The Game, but this album was the first time they made a glossy, unabashed pop album, one that was designed to sound exactly like its time. They might be posed in leather jackets on the cover, but they hardly sound tough or menacing – they rarely rock, at least not in the gonzo fashion that's long been their trademark…

This unofficial 'Opera Omnia' was released as a four CD boxed set in Italy in 1992, in a blue and gold box, with a colour booklet. It contains live versions of almost every Queen song ever performed live, from a number of different concerts, in chronological order.

Queen were never adverse to commercialism - after all, Freddie Mercury made sure that he recorded a full album's worth of vocal tracks on his deathbed, so his colleagues could record a posthumous album. It should come as no surprise, then, that just two years after the release of that posthumous record, the surviving members went back into the vaults to assemble Rocks. As the title suggests, Rocks captures Queen at their most rockin', or, to be more accurate, their heaviest. Despite its breakneck conclusion, "Bohemian Rhapsody" is not here, but "Seven Seas of Rhye," "Stone Cold Crazy," "We Will Rock You," "Sheer Heart Attack," "Fat Bottomed Girls," "I Want It All" and "I'm In Love with My Car" are, along with several underappreciated album tracks, new remixes of "Tie Your Mother Down" and "I Can't Live with You," and "No One Like You," a tribute to Mercury recorded by the surviving members of Queen.