Queen as progressive band?

Hey there, been reading this topic on and off for a while!

`The Game' is a very decent pop/rock album, but of course the majority of the progressive elements in the band's sound were gone. It's pretty consistently good, though, and `Dragon Attack' has a terrific heavy bass line!

To be honest, the real problem with the album is that it might have one of the single WORST album covers of all time! Could they have picked a worse picture of themselves lol?!

In the end, it's just a top-notch pop/rock album, with a number of great tracks, with the odd filler or two! So a very typical Queen album, but you can't go wrong with that!

I especially liked May's `Sail Away Sweet Sister'! `Dragon Attack is a freaking killer too!

Now that I look back at it (haven't listened to it in a while), that album did have a stack of big hits on it, eh?

I do remember `The Game' was pretty short - Just a bunch of concise, tight, well played and catchy pop songs!

Ha! I was just about to ask if you'd heard `Hot Space'! That one is a lot more difficult to like, but I think in retrospect it's not quite as truly terrible as some make it out to be.

Oh, there is some absolute dogs**t tracks on it - `Body Language' is so freaking awful lol! There is a much stronger programmed and keyboard sound to it, bit of a shock at first. However, I'm a little more forgiving of it these days than I used to be.

But just make sure you get `The Game' before it, under all circumstances!

No

nice speech, but doesn't change the fact that this isnt progressive as we know it Jim

Originally posted by richardh The only studio album I have is Flash Gordon. Reading the reviews I should perhaps consider QueenII but lack of keyboards puts me off. This a small taster of what Queen could have been btw I love the film

BTW: Excellent band, Night at the Opera and Day at the Races are magnificent albums, but except a couple of tracks like Prophet's Song, Bohemian Rhapsody and IMO Somebody to Love, I don't believe they played Progressive Rock.

Edited by Ivan_Melgar_M - March 08 2012 at 00:00

I guess if someone were to base the opinion of `Queen is not progressive rock' on only having heard the stuff like `We Will Rock You, `We Are The Champions' etc, then they'd have no reason to consider them prog. But even `Bohemian Rhapsody', a song EVERYONE has heard, is VERY progressive rock! :)

Queen were the very fist band I ever got into when I was a teenager, and listening to those early albums....I had never heard ANYTHING like them before!

So even though the band is not one I listen to a lot these days, they are directly responsible for me going on to discover progressive rock.

Originally posted by clarke2001 Originally posted by lucas I really don't care how you label them, they were an astonishing band, one of the best ever. They were sort of an operatic rock band evolving with their time. And if some people tell they lost their "bite" after the game, they should listen to songs like "innuendo", "is this the world we created", "tear it up", "gimme the prize", "who wants to live forever", "was it all worth it", "scandal", "I can't live with you", "don't try so hard", "the hitman", "the show must go on". They all showcase some tremendous musicianship and exceptional vocals, of course. YEAH!!! Now that's a real fan!

Originally posted by The Dark Elf Originally posted by NickHall nice speech, but doesn't change the fact that this isnt progressive as we know it Jim   And what is "progressive as we know it" precisely?   I would argue that both Queen II and Night at the Opera are significantly progressive. Look at many of the albums that are considered "progressive": Rush's 2112 (sorry, to my ears there's only half a prog album), Yes' Fragile (a few long prog songs with several 1, 2 and 3 minute songs surrounding them), Pink Floyd's Meddle (one long prog song, but the other side has a hard rock instrumental, two psychedelic tunes, a song about the beach that Herb Alpert could've wrote and a blues tune about a dog). The same could be said about a few early Genesis and Tull albums.   But boundaries are broken in Queen II and Night at the Opera that, to me, are indicative of progressive albums. An album like Night at the Opera, for instance, has unconventional instrumentation (Ukulele, kazoos, and vocal overlays that are, in themselves, a form of instrumentation, like on "The Prophet Song"), and in addition to hard rock and pop tunes, a song composed in rhapsodic form, the use of acoustic guitar, English Burlesque, and a faithful version of "God Save the Queen". The album progresses far beyond the standard rock format.   And yes, that was a nice speech by Moshkito. Sometimes I actually agree with him. We must be getting close to a lunar eclipse or having solar flares or something.

I'd agree with you. At first, progressive rock is a very wide definition of genre which may imply many forms of experimentation in music, not just long epics.

For me, Queen WERE a prog band from 1971 to 1976 and also in 1989—1991.