Genre > Rock > Classic Rock

Queen's 1977 release News Of The World solidified the band's position as '70s rock royalty while expanding upon their artistic vision with an eclectic collection of songs. Although the album is famous for its anthemic We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions opening medley, it also features the Roger Taylor-sung Sheer Heart Attack which is as close as Queen ever came to punk as well as the provocatively sensual Get Down, Make Love.

Nothing succeeds like excess, at least that's the case with Queen's breakthrough classic, A Night At The Opera. On one level, the title is a reference to the band's operatic pretensions as evidenced here on the classic Bohemian Rhapsody. It also happens to be the title of a Marx Brothers movie, and the reference isn't lost on Queen, who seldom scaled the heights of pomprock without a knowing wink. The album is remembered for its meticulously produced bombast, but the truth is that there's a wide variety of material here, from the gorgeous piano-based You're My Best Friend and the McCartneyesque 39, to the music-hall-style Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon and the pedal-to-the-metal rockers Death on Two Legs and I'm in Love with My Car. A Night at the Opera is widely considered to be the quintessential Queen album and justifiably so.

This fall marks Queens return to studio recording for the first time in 13 years, to commemorate that occasion, Universal has created the Queen on Vinyl Collectors Edition re-issue program in which every Queen studio album is to be released on vinyl LPs over the next two years. The original albums are being re-issued correct in every detail to the original releases, including inner sleeves, packaging and bonuses.

This fall marks Queens return to studio recording for the first time in 13 years, to commemorate that occasion, Universal has created the Queen on Vinyl Collectors Edition re-issue program in which every Queen studio album is to be released on vinyl LPs over the next two years. The original albums are being re-issued correct in every detail to the original releases, including inner sleeves, packaging and bonuses.

Brand New One-Hour DVD Documentary, Queen : The American Dream

A special box set of Queen's landmark 1977 album News of the World is set for release, marking the 40th anniversary of the original release.

Originally launched in October 1977, News of the World is one of Queen's biggest selling albums of all time. It opens with two of the band's most indestructible worldwide hits, the Brian May-penned We Will Rock You and Freddie Mercury's We Are The Champions, monumental stadium anthems which remain a staple of major sporting events all around the world to this day. With songs written by all four band members, NOTW, Queen's sixth album, set a new standard in stylistic diversity, from Roger Taylor’s proto-punk blast of Sheer Heart Attack to the salacious funk-rock groove workout Get Down Make Love, to the fragrant tropical calypso-pop Who Needs You. News of the World also features the hit Spread Your Wings, the epic rock saga It’s Late and Freddie’s wistfully romantic My Melancholy Blues.

The new package includes the original album on CD, plus two further CDs of recently unearthed out-takes and rarities from the band's archives, one of which is a newly created ‘alternative’ version of the whole album – Raw Sessions.

For many Queen devotees, this Raw Sessions CD will be the most intriguing component of the new release. Mined deep from long-vaulted studio multi-track tapes, this extraordinary parallel album brings to light never-before-heard alternative versions of each of the album’s 11 tracks. Every lead vocal is different, as are most of the lead guitar parts and a great many other instrumental details. Here we experience We Are The Champions anew, with many unfamiliar vocal and instrumental elements, and for the first time at its full-recorded length rather than the edited 1977 album cut. Here also is the chance to discover peak era Freddie Mercury vocals on a track that nobody outside Queen’s inner circle has heard him sing before at all – Brian May’s All Dead, All Dead. The original album version features May himself on vocals. Roger Taylor’s Sheer Heart Attack can be heard with its original long-lost guitar intro and uncut ending. Taylor’s other song, Fight From The Inside, is more remarkable in that we hear his demo vocal worked on in his home studio in preparation for the next sessions, ‘homework’ that all of the band members would regularly carry out. As a point of note, Taylor plays all instruments on these two recordings, except for some lead guitar. In this age of digital leaks and obsessive fan culture, there is already great excitement that these recordings are, in 2017, truly New to the World.

The third CD in the package, Bonus Tracks, features a feast of previously released but hard-to-find versions of News of the World tracks recorded in concert, for radio shows, or in alternate mixes. Included is the band's entire five-song final live session recorded for BBC Radio in October 1977, seven live performances of NOTW songs, plus rare backing tracks and instrumentals of the Queen classics We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions, Spread Your Wings, Get Down, Make Love and Fight From The Inside. Also on this third disc is the seldom-heard US radio edit of It's Late, making its belated CD debut, and the rowdy stomper Feelings Feelings, which was recorded during the original NOTW sessions but not included on the final album.

Another outstanding feature of this weighty 40th anniversary box is another first – a pure analogue re-cut of the original vinyl LP, direct from the unmastered analogue master mix tapes. This exceptional album collector’s piece is presented in a facsimile original sleeve. There is also a rich selection of NOTW related memorabilia including three posters and a 60-page book of images, mostly previously unseen.

The package is completed with a brand new one-hour DVD documentary, Queen : The American Dream, created from backstage material filmed during Queen’s 1977 USA News of the World tour. In November that year, Queen embarked on another headlining US tour. The highly respected British radio and TV presenter Bob Harris, complete with full film crew, followed their journey as part of a proposed documentary that has remained incomplete and unreleased – until now. The crew had unlimited access to the band on and off stage, in the recording studio and during rehearsals. This one-hour documentary includes superb live footage of Queen at the Houston Summit in December. We also see moments from the birth of We Will Rock You and We Are The Champions, songs that would both earn a place in the Grammy Hall of Fame. Queen : The American Dream is a fascinating behind-the-scenes insight into a young British band at a creative peak, defying the odds as they take the USA by storm.

For casual fans and Queen connoisseurs alike, the new NOTW package, with its feast of extra material, is manna from Heaven - a bumper haul of buried treasure from a world-beating band in its prime.

Limited 180 gram heavyweight vinyl LP repressing of this album from the British rock quartet. Innuendo is the fourteenth studio album by Queen. Released in February 1991, it was the final studio album to be released in Freddie Mercury's lifetime and is the last to be composed entirely of new material. The album was recorded between March 1989 and November 1990.

Stylistically, Innuendo is in some sense a return to Queen's roots, with it's harder rock sound, complex musical composition (title track), psychedelic effects ("I'm Going Slightly Mad"), and strong vocals from Mercury ranging over four octaves. Queen formed in 1970 and consisted of Freddie Mercury (lead vocals, piano), Brian May (guitar, vocals), John Deacon (bass guitar), and Roger Taylor (drums, vocals).

Queen's earliest works were influenced by progressive rock, hard rock and heavy metal, but the band gradually ventured into more conventional and radio-friendly works by incorporating further styles, such as arena rock and pop rock, into their music. They eventually became one of the most famous rock bands in the world and still command much respect long after Mercury's 1991 death.

Embossed Front Sleeve

Between February 1973 and October 1977, Queen recorded six sessions for the BBC – twenty four new and alternative recordings spanning four albums.

They revisited nineteen different songs in all: My Fairy King (the first Queen song ever to be broadcast on radio), Liar, Son And Daughter, Doing All Right, Great King Rat, Modern Times Rock’n’Roll, Ogre Battle, Nevermore, White Queen, See What A Fool I’ve Been (a song that never appeared on any Queen studio album), Now I’m Here, Stone Cold Crazy, Flick Of The Wrist, Tenement Funster, Spread Your Wings, My Melancholy Blues, It’s Late, the only known studio recording of their dramatically different full-band ‘fast’ arrangement of We Will Rock You and the song that became their very first single Keep Yourself Alive.

All six sessions have been remastered and feature here together for the very first time.

Queen's eponymous 1973 debut features all of the band's signature elements from Freddy Mercury's operatic harmonies to Brian May's orchestral guitar work to their theatric and grandiose hard rock. The album and its sound was as unique as it was promising and it provides a rough blue print to what would coalesce into greatness on their subsequent releases.

Includes Booklet Featuring Previously Unpublished Photos

Freddie Mercury was a man of many talents and many different sides. The songs he wrote for and with Queen filled stadiums around the globe and have rightly gone down in history, but he also embarked on a solo career that took him from the clubs of Munich and New York to the great opera houses of the world.

He was the ultimate showman, but he kept his private life away from the prying eyes of the media; a larger than life rock star who loved disco, classical music and ballet. He was a restless spirit, a true chameleon who reveled in his own contradictions.

All the different sides of this iconic musician can be found on Freddie Mercury: Messenger Of The Gods – The Singles. Fittingly released on Mercury Records for the world outside North America, and on Hollywood Records in North America, this box set brings together all 13 of Freddie’s solo singles on individually coloured vinyl.

From his debut solo single I Can Hear Music, released under the name Larry Lurex, through the dance floor-influenced solo anthems of the 80s and up to his collaborations with legendary Spanish opera singer Montserrat Caballé including the timeless Barcelona, this is a journey through the career of a unique talent.

Born Farrokh Bulsara on the East African island of Zanzibar on September 5, 1946, the rechristened Freddie Mercury was already a star in his own mind by the time he formed Queen with Brian May and Roger Taylor in 1970. Where his band mates had studied astrophysics, dentistry and electronics at college, Freddie majored in stardom.

His first solo single actually emerged a week before Queen’s own debut 7”. Released in 1973 and credited to Larry Lurex in a nod to the fashionably flamboyant noms de rock of the glam era, the Beach Boys cover I Can Hear Music and its B-side, Goin’ Back, were recorded as a favour towards a musical project by Trident Studios’ house engineer Robin Geoffrey Cable, in 1972.

As Queen’s career rocketed towards the heavens, Freddie poured his energies into the band. It would be more than a decade before he released his second solo single, the pulsating, electronic Love Kills. Originally released in 1984, Love Kills was a collaboration with famed Italian disco producer Giorgio Moroder for the soundtrack to Moroder’s update of the groundbreaking 1927 silent movie Metropolis. A Top 10 UK hit, it found Freddie moving away from Queen’s traditional sound, paving the way for what he would do next.

Released in 1985, Freddie’s debut solo album, Mr Bad Guy, fully explored the music he had fallen in love with in the dance clubs of Munich and New York. The four hit singles released from that album – I Was Born To Love You, Made In Heaven, Living On My Own and Love Me Like There’s No Tomorrow, all of which are included in the Messenger Of The Gods box set – crackled with playfully hedonistic energy, but they also hid a more serious side to Freddie. Here was a man who craved the good times but wanted something deeper as well.

Within two years, he had abandoned the sound of the clubs for the music of the opera house – though not before releasing both the epic single Time, the theme to the lavish stage musical of the same name produced by Dave Clark, and his outrageous (and strangely revealing) Top 5 cover of The Platters’ 1965 hit, The Great Pretender.

In 1987, he dived headlong into the world of opera and classical music with the towering single, Barcelona. A duet with legendary Spanish soprano Montserrat Caballé, an idol of Freddie’s, it came about after the opera star asked him to write a song about her home town.

Barcelona remains one of the most momentous hit singles not just of Freddie’s career but in pop history. Not only did it lead to an album of collaborations between these two huge talents, but the title track was also chosen as the official anthem of the 1992 Olympics. That song, together with the two other singles taken from the album, The Golden Boy and How Can I Go On, are all included as part of Messenger Of The Gods with their original B-sides.

In October 1988 Freddie and Montserrat were invited by the King and Queen of Spain to perform Barcelona on the steps of Barcelona’s National Palace of Montjuic at the open air La Nit festival which was staged to mark the arrival of the Olympic Flag from Seoul.

But sadly, Freddie would not live to see the fruits of his collaboration with Montserrat Caballé showcased at the Barcelona Olympics. He passed away on November 24, 1991, just seven months before the Games took place. The grand opening ceremony was a fitting tribute to a man who thrived on spectacle.

Messenger Of The Gods is completed by two posthumous singles, In My Defence and Living On My Own (No More Brothers Radio Mix), the latter of which became Freddie’s first solo number 1 and was the biggest selling European single of the year in 1993.

Had he lived, it is anyone’s guess where this most restless and protean of singer’s muses would have taken him. But Messenger Of The Gods – The Singles is a towering legacy, a collection of songs which will never lose their stature of classics and will live on forever.

This fall marks Queens return to studio recording for the first time in 13 years, to commemorate that occasion, Universal has created the Queen on Vinyl Collectors Edition re-issue program in which every Queen studio album is to be released on vinyl LPs over the next two years. The original albums are being re-issued correct in every detail to the original releases, including inner sleeves, packaging and bonuses.

This fall marks Queens return to studio recording for the first time in 13 years, to commemorate that occasion, Universal has created the Queen on Vinyl Collectors Edition re-issue program in which every Queen studio album is to be released on vinyl LPs over the next two years. The original albums are being re-issued correct in every detail to the original releases, including inner sleeves, packaging and bonuses.

This Hammersmith Christmas concert was the culmination of the 26-date 'Queen invites you to A Night At The Opera' UK tour of 1975, and was the last show of a very eventful and exciting year for Queen.

Queen – A Night at the Odeon – Hammersmith 1975, the show which marked the live debut of the band’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” while the song was in the midst of its nine-week reign atop the U.K. charts, remains a pivotal moment in Queen’s history.

“This concert was very special because it was the first time we ever played a whole show completely live on TV … the Christmas Show,” guitarist Brian May reflected in a press release. “The quality, after great rescue work and transfer into the digital domain, is amazing. And the energy we had comes across very forcefully.” --www.ultimateclassicrock.com

All 15 Hit Studio Albums Sourced From The Original Master Tapes

Mastered By Bob Ludwig

Half-Speed Lacquers Cut At Abbey Road Studios

Pressed On Heavyweight 180 Gram Colored Vinyl

Includes A Lavishly Illustrated 108 Page Hardback Book

15 albums. 18 discs? What’s the story?

Queen always had a special fondness for vinyl, the medium in which they first began to create, around 1970. As a matter of principle, every Queen studio album was offered at the time of original release on vinyl, even well into the era when CD’s had taken over as the medium of choice for most of the public. However, the final two albums, ‘Innuendo’ and ‘Made In Heaven’ were actually formatted primarily with the CD in mind, with a longer running time, so the contents had to be edited down to fit them on to the two sides of a vinyl album. Now, specially for this edition, for the first time, these two albums have been cut at full length as double vinyl LP’s - four sides each – making up a vinyl set that is complete in every way.

The box-set offers many other special features. Most noticeable is the coloured vinyl: designed for collectors, each album has been given a different colour, in keeping with its original artwork, giving a unique record-deck experience. The colour discs have been custom-produced especially for this set, using new material technology which ensures the sound quality is uncompromised.

There are more surprises in the box set; ‘Queen II’ originally never had a designated ‘A side’ or ‘B side’ - but ‘Side White’ and ‘Side Black’. For this new edition, the album has been cut on two separate discs, black and white, each with a custom etching on the reverse side, a nice bonus for collectors.

The collection has been five years in the making. Throughout this time Queen’s production team has worked extensively on all stages of this painstaking mastering process. The first step was the tape research; locating and confirming the correct versions and best sources for all tracks. Most notably, Under Pressure, plus five tracks on the ‘Innuendo’ album, were improved hugely after the discovery of better sources during this period. Particular attention was paid to the original releases to ensure that nothing was lost or changed for the worse by reverting to earlier sources.

1991's Innuendo would be Queen's last album with founding member Freddie Mercury as he passed away several months after its release. A fitting end to one of rock's most successful original line-ups, Innuendo brilliantly balances blatant autobiographical songs like These Are The Days of Our Lives and The Show Must Go On with humorous tracks Delilah and I'm Going Slightly Mad and the band's signature pop fare I Can't Live With You and Don't Try So Hard.

Includes Additional Bonus 12” Single Of William Orbit Mix Of “Let Me In Your Heart Again”

Having in the three months since its original release already provided Queen with their twenty fifth top ten album and twenty sixth UK gold album, Queen’s current best selling compilation package Queen Forever is to receive a special limited edition vinyl release coming this spring.

The original 36 track 2 CD Queen Forever release will now be made available as a strictly limited 4 LP vinyl box set which includes an additional 12” single bonus disc exclusive to the set featuring a special William Orbit mix of the only recently heard Freddie Mercury track “Let Me In Your Heart Again”.

The Orbit mix was held back from the Forever CD release and only surfaced for a limited period to support the Coca-Cola (RED) AIDS awareness campaign mounted at the tail end of last year.

The B side of the 12” single has a further bonus feature exclusive to this box set – a laser etching of the box set cover illustration.

Distinguishing itself as the first Queen album to feature new Freddie Mercury led tracks since the band’s 1995 Made In Heaven album, Queen Forever brings out into the light the long anticipated track from Queen and Michael Jackson, ‘There Must Be More to Life Than This’, an unfinished Mercury-Queen track 'Let Me In Your Heart Again' originating from the band’s The Works album recording sessions (featured on this vinyl package in a newly available William Orbit mix) and a new ballad version of Mercury’s first solo hit, his Giorgio Moroder collaboration, ‘Love Kills’, which is currently being heavily played at UK and European radio.

The rest of the package mixes Queen hits, classic tracks and celebrates the extraordinary musical path of one of the world’s greatest rock bands. Reaching back as far as 1974 with fan favourite Nevermore, a Freddie Mercury song originally included on Queen II, Queen Forever progresses to feature songs that spotlight the band’s songwriting prowess, studio experimentation and remarkable development, and is completed with latter-day Queen hits, including ’91’s no. 1 These Are The Days Of Our Lives and ‘95’s Too Much Love Will Kill You, together with the poignant A Winter’s Tale, recorded during Freddie Mercury’s final Queen recording sessions in Montreux in 1991.

Queen Forever is a thrilling showcase for exclusive new Queen recordings but equally as much a paean to the extraordinary musical achievements of John Deacon, Brian May, Roger Taylor and the late Freddie Mercury, whose singular talent we again get to marvel at through this meticulously presented 36 track collection.