FRIENDS WILL BE FRIENDS / SEVEN SEAS OF RHYE

A more obvious choice for a single, 'Friends Will Be Friends' made its way to the UK chart in 1986. As a song, it's a decent pop tune, not the best on the 'A Kind Of Magic', but perhaps the most coherent. I was never too fond of it, I have to admit, although I am a QUEEN fan and I love the majority of their output, regardless of an era or a style. It contains band's trademark signatures - easily recognizable May's guitar solo, Freddie's excellent vocals performance, even a chord progressions and a change of pace within the song are instantly recognizable.

As for the B side, I don't have any complaints about the actual song per se- it's "Seven Seas Of Rhye" from their second album, but choice is a bit awkward. I'm sure they were trying to increase the sales of older albums, so this is logical as a financial move. As an artistic one...I'm afraid they were well aware of the fact that the current album contains a lot of weak material, so they were delving their own, artistically much superior musical history. Such a strategy will became a commonplace from that period onwards. Pity. Pity for more reasons.