NEWS OF THE WORLD

News Of The World ended the exceptionally strong series of albums released by Queen in the 70's; the self-titled debut, Queen II, Sheer Heart Attack, A Night At The Opera and A Day At The Races were all excellent albums. Admittedly, A Day At The Races already showed some signs of what was to come on this album, but A Day At The Races was still a great album. The progressive and epic aspects of the band's sound took a backseat here for the first time and some Arena Rock entered the "royal court". But, on the other hand, there are some very good moments here. But News Of The World is still one of the band's least good albums ever, in my opinion.

We Will Rock You is a song I just cannot listen to anymore, I always skip it! It has simply been played to death and it has a tedious beat that I find overly simple and too repetitive. We Are The Champions is a very good song, indeed a Queen classic. However, I mostly don't listen to it anymore while playing this album. Indeed, I usually skip the three first tracks. Sheer Heart Attack is something of a Punk song! It is completely out of place on a Queen album in my opinion.

All Dead, All Dead is sung by Brian May and he sings very well in my opinion, a very nice little piano ballad. Spread Your Wings is, however, the first great song of this album. It is a very typical Queen song and as such it offers nothing really new in relation to earlier albums; great melody, great vocals, great lead guitar. The standards set by previous albums is high indeed, so maybe one shouldn't be too harsh here?

Fight From The Inside is a Roger Taylor number and one of his least interesting ones ever on a Queen album. It gets a little bit boring towards the middle, I think. Get Down Make Love has a strong chorus melody but overall I find this song slightly tedious. This is far away from the greatness of earlier sonic experiments like the amazing The Prophet's Song from A Night At The Opera, for example.

Sleeping On The Sidewalk is a pretty straightforward Blues Rock number again sung by Brian May. Not quite what you expect from Queen, and hardly very interesting from a Prog point of view. Who Needs You is actually one of the better songs here! The acoustic guitar work is great! 'I like it, I like it' (as Freddie says in the background during one of the great guitar solos).

It's Late is a good bluesy Rock song, but it is a little bit too long for its own good. My Melancholy Blues is a wonderful song and a great ending to a not so great album.

There is not much progressive material on this album and it is a major disappointment after the fantastic string of albums that went before it. Recommended to all fans and collectors, but others should get most other Queen albums before this one.

Freddie once joked in an interview about calling this album 'Duck Soup' as that was the title of the Marx Brothers movie following their two previous movies A Night At The Opera and A Day At The Races for which Queen borrowed their two previous album titles.

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