My Fourth Album: Greatest Hits
Artist: Queen
Released: November 2 1991
Label: EMI / Parlophone


Artist's Bio: Queen are a British rock band formed by Freddie Mercury, Brian May, and Roger Taylor in London, England in 1970 from the remains of Smile, with John Deacon completing the lineup the following year. Britain's most successful band of the past three decades, Queen became popular during the mid-to-late 1970s and to this day retain an extremely large international fan base.
Although formerly overlooked by critics, especially those in the United States, Queen have more recently been recognized as making an influential contribution to arena rock, glam rock, hard rock, heavy metal, progressive rock and rap, among others. In the Music Of The Millennium poll conducted by Channel 4 in 1999, Queen were voted the second greatest band in music history.
 
Freddie Mercury (1946–1991) vocals , piano , synthesizer : Mercury, whose birth name was Farrokh Bulsara, is perhaps best known as the lead vocalist and front-man of the group. However these roles effectively placed a shadow over his skills as an accomplished pianist . He had a very distinctive voice with a tenor vocal range and would sometimes play the rhythm guitar. He wrote the majority of Queen's well-known songs e.g. " Bohemian Rhapsody ", " Somebody To Love ", " We Are The Champions ", and " Crazy Little Thing Called Love
John Deacon (born 1951) bass , rhythm guitar and synthesizer : Deacon was the bass player of the group. He auditioned for the role after the band went through three other unsuitable bass players and is the only member to never sing lead vocals on a studio album. In later years, he became more heavily involved in the financial and managerial side of Queen although he has 'retired' as a musician and chose not to participate in the Queen + Paul Rodgers tour. He composed a number of Queen's most famous songs e.g. " You're My Best Friend ", " Another One Bites The Dust ", and " I Want To Break Free ".
Brian May CBE (born 1947) guitar , synthesizer and vocals : May is the lead guitarist of the group. As a teenager, he and his father built the so-called Red Special which is the electric guitar he continues to use to this day. He occasionally sang lead vocals on some of the quieter tracks that he had written e.g. "'39", "Sleeping On The Sidewalk", and "Sail Away Sweet Sister" although none were released as singles. Also he wrote many of Queen's widely recognisable songs e.g. " Tie Your Mother Down ", " We Will Rock You ", " Fat Bottomed Girls ", and " Hammer To Fall ".
Roger Taylor (born 1949) drums , percussion , synthesizer and vocals : Taylor is the drummer of the group. In addition to drums and other percussion instruments, he would sometimes play lead guitar, rhythm guitar, or bass guitar on some of his own songs. He occasionally sang lead vocals on some of the heavier tracks that he had written e.g. "I'm In Love With My Car", "Fight From The Inside", and " Modern Times Rock 'n' Roll " although none were released as singles. Also he wrote some of Queen's widely recognisable songs e.g. " Radio Gaga" and "A Kind Of Magic".

* Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Press play to hear sample

1 : Bohemian Rhapsody
2 : Another One Bites the Dust
3 : Killer Queen
4 : Fat Bottomed Girls
5 : Bicycle Race
6 : You're My Best Friend
7 : Don't Stop Me Now
8 : Save Me
9 : Crazy Little Thing Called Love
10 : Somebody to Love
11 : Now I'm Here
12 : Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy
13 : Play the Game
14 : Flash
15 : Seven Seas of Rhye
16 : We Will Rock You
17 : We Are the Champions
18 : I'm in Love With My Car
19 : Under Pressure
20 : Tie Your Mother Down


Review: Pay attention, because this gets tricky. Very tricky. The first Queen Greatest Hits released in America was a 14-track LP that hit the stores in 1981. Several years later, CDs overtook LPs as the leading format of recorded music, but due to various legal reasons, Queen's catalog didn't hit CD until 1991, and soon, CD compilations started to appear in bewildering configurations. In the U.K. , where Queen remained on the charts throughout the '80s, a sequel to that 1981 Greatest Hits was released in 1991, chronicling such hits as "Under Pressure," "I Want to Break Free," and " Radio Ga Ga. " In the U.S. , Queen stopped having Top 40 hits after " Radio Ga Ga," so Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 was filled with music largely unfamiliar to the American listener. Hollywood, the American label with the rights to the reissues, thus decided to slightly reconfigure that U.K. Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 by dropping a few tracks and substituting such radio staples as "Tie Your Mother Down" and "Stone Cold Crazy," along with the hits "Under Pressure" and "Bohemian Rhapsody," which was a current hit in 1992 thanks to its exposure in the hit film Wayne's World . This reconfigured Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 was called Classic Queen and it was a Top Ten hit, but surely listeners expecting Queen songs a little more classic than "Headlong" and "I'm Going Slightly Mad" were disappointed that, say, "We Will Rock You" and "Another One Bites the Dust" weren't on this new CD. So, six months after the March 1992 release of Classic Queen , Hollywood followed with Greatest Hits , which may have shared its name with the 1981 collection but essentially rounded up the tunes from that disc that didn't appear on Classic Queen , adding a few more tunes to bring it up to 17 tracks.... Read More...

Historical success : As of 2005, according to The The Guinness Book of World Records , Queen albums had spent more time on the UK album charts than those of any other musical act.

Current Rankings:

1. Queen (1,422 weeks/27 years)

2. The Beatles (1,293 weeks/24.8 years)

3. Elvis Presley (1,280 weeks/24.6 years)

4. U2 (1,150 weeks/22 years)

5. Dire Straits (1,136 weeks/21.8 years)

6. Simon and Garfunkel (1,114 weeks/21.4 years)

7. Madonna (1,032 weeks/19.8 years)

8. David Bowie (1,005 weeks/19.3 years)

9. Elton John (989 weeks/19 years)

10. Michael Jackson (966 weeks/18.6 years)

 

 

 

Also in 2005, with the release of its live album with Paul Rodgers, Queen moved into third place on the list of acts with the most aggregate time spent on the British record charts; this does not make allowances for the fact that the charts were a smaller list in the 1960s.

Current rankings:

1. Elvis Presley (2,074 weeks/39.9 years)

2. Cliff Richard (1,982 weeks/38 years)

3. Queen (1,755 weeks/33.7 years)

4. The Beatles (1,749 weeks/33.6 years)

5. Madonna (1,660 weeks/31.9 years)

6. Elton John (1,626 weeks/31.2 years)