mail: daniel_fjall@hotmail.com
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a night at the opera a day at the races jazz
A Night At The Opera With their clean production and slick performance, Queen are to heavy metal and hard rock what the Eagles are to country. They dressed their original genre up in a nice, lightweight suit and made it accessible to the general record buying public. Simply put, they commercialized it. However, Queen could be interesting and artistically meaningful. Their high leveled musicianship and ambitious visions made them able to combine hard rock, pop and even opera. Sometimes less successful, but when it worked, it really worked with impressive results. A Night At The Opera is probably their most diverse album, mixing hard rock (“Death On Two Legs”), pop (“You’re My Best Friend”), British music hall (“Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon”) and even American folk music (“’39”). Whist nearly all songs are good, it isn’t very hard to find the yummy-stuff. The baroque piano lead ballad “Love of My Life” is very beautiful, mostly thanks to the broken hearted melody and superb harmony vocals. There’s also the majestic, epic “Bohemian Rhapsody”, with it’s different sections stands as one of the greatest, single music piece to have been written in modern history. Melancholia, uplifting rock, extraordinary a cappella and an infamous opera part leaves the listener stunned. Of course it’s been killed and overplayed by media, just as Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway To Heaven”, but in what way would that make the effort, talent and emotions put into the music any less impressive? There are a couple of things that prevents A Night At The Opera to be perfect. The music hall numbers are entertaining, but whilst “Lazing On A Saturday Afternoon” comes as an surprise following the hard “Death On Two Legs” and “Seaside Rendezvous” is a fun reprise, the trick becomes tiring and over used when they use it a third time with “Good Company”. Also, “The Prophet’s Song” has it’s share of magic (especially the during the ‘la-la-la-la’-vocal part), but is way too messy and unfocused to be considered as a highlight. And “I’m in Love With My Car” is just awful.
A Day At The Races Just as it’s predecessor A Day At The Races is ambitious, solid and well crafted. It is far from as diverse and the peaks are doomed to appear as small hills rather than the mountains of A Night At The Opera. The album is still very consistent and never sinks into the deep valleys in the same way as Opera. The strongest moments of the album belongs to guitarist Brian May’s opening head banging rocker “Tie Your Mother Down” and Freddie Mercury’s gospel anthem “Somebody To Love”. Remastered versions of them both was included as bonus tracks on the 1991 CD-reissue. However, the absolute high point of the album is a number quite the opposite to the centerpiece of Queen’s last album. The vocal harmony based “You Take My Breath Away” is a ballad that manages to be ambitious, impressive and at the same time earnest, humble, down to earth and heavenly beautiful. Simple, minor piano chords rings out in the air and it’s so naked and direct it is impossible to not be affected of it. There are songs here that might not be particularly overwhelming, but non is particularly bad or disgusting either. Yes, some of the lyrics might come across as childish, naive and even poor, but Queen was rarely, or never, about poetry. The actual music is their field, and whilst A Day At The Races might not be the classic A Night At The opera is, it is just as solid overall.
Jazz In 1977 Queen released News of The World, famous for it’s two opening tracks “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions”. I have it tucked away somewhere, but I really don’t feel like listening to it. If my memory serves me right, that album is pretty awful. Much better to listen to 1978’s Jazz then. Queen had taken a huge step with A Night At The Opera/A day At The Races, but News of The World was an obvious step back. The actual songs were simpler, the sound was rawer and the production and arrangement was far from as ambitious as on its predecessors. On Jazz the band hasn’t left the ideas and approach from News of The World completely, but they have bothered to clean up the production and actually starting to explore new styles again. Freddie’s “Mustapha” is heavily influenced of Arab-music, and whilst being a bit confusing to begin with, it grows into being rather pleasant. The epic “Bicycle Race” is the most ambitious track the band been involved with since “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Far from as serious and bitter as “Bohemian Rhapsody”, an epic and extremely impressive nonetheless. “Don’t Stop Me Now” ranks among the strongest songs the band ever did, combining the beauty of their ballads and the faster pop they did so well if they put in some effort. This is basically Mercury’s album. His songs shines next to the other members contributions (even if May’s “Fat Bottomed Girls” is a lot of fun). However, even though the songwriting is a bit shaky it doesn’t mean that their playing ability is weak. Brian May is in top form throughout and Deacon holds the bass lines in a firm grip and Taylor, well, Taylor is Taylor and doesn’t make anything remarkable. The album doesn’t have any particular stinker, except maybe for the closing “More of That Jazz”, but only a few real successful songs. Pretty much like A Day At The Races, but less ambitious, less impressive and less exciting.
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