Originally published by L.S. Media. June 29th 2011.
Every band, regardless of their genre, long standing or ability will eventually make the album that shows they are fallible to their fans and elevates everything else they do to another level. With Queen that album has long been considered to be the 1982 studio release Hot Space. Its arrival had long been coming with elements being heard on The Game, Jazz and the lamentable Flash Gordon. However Hot Space plumbed new depths as the band finally departed from their roots completely and delved full force into the world of disco and pop music.
If this album had been done later and by some of the more associated acts of pop like The Pet Shop Boys it would be hailed as a classic of the time, however, in the hands of the talented Freddie Mercury, Brain May, John Deacon and Roger Taylor, it has the feel of an album that should never have been made.
Even on the band’s worst album there is a nugget or two of genuine brilliance, the first in the form of the collaboration with David Bowie, the number one hit Under Pressure. Aided by a fantastic video the band showed what could have achieved had they gone down a slightly different track but sadly Hot Space will go down in the annals of the band as lacking and irrelevant.
The second cracking track was Brian May’s Put Out the Fire which holds true to former ideals and is a wonderful piece of social commentary that was sadly missing in other band’s work.
It would be two more years before the band regained what had been lost and it would be three years before they became the darlings of the Rock community again after a misguided tour and set of performances at Sun City.
The album reached the heights of number four but in the American market that the band had managed to become such hot property, they had fallen down badly and only achieved a top 30 finish. In one of the greatest paradoxes in Rock, the band had gone so low in the eyes of a lot of their fans there really was only one way they could ever go from there.
Ian D. Hall