Queen Album By Album: 'Hot Space'

I won't vote; the only one I've ever heard is "Under Pressure". But I certainly do like that one.

 

As I've read here many times, artists tend to have around five years of glory, after which they're hanging on, trying to reclaim the spotlight, or just doing odd projects without any direction.

Queen's glory ended around (most would say before) The Game. While nothing they did afterwards reaches the heights of those years, I have to say they did a really good job of making decent albums with good melodies afterwards.

 

I go for "Cool Cat" too. A nice little cool, soft soul song, tucked away at the end of the album.

 

I like this album. By "White rock band going disco" standards, it's a good one.
I voted for Back Chat, simply because less than a week ago I heard the longer version on the 12" for the first time, and it's fun-ky!

 

I'm going for 'Put Out The Fire' here, at least it rocks.

 

The mods want me to stop posting polls for a while, as they are overruning the forum a bit. So, just to let everyone know, the votes for 'A kind of magic', 'The miracle,' 'Innuendo' and 'Made In Heaven' will have to be postponed indefinately.

 

This is funny: Queen and Kiss took a little longer to be discovered by Brazilian audiences. So when their glory days were over in other countries, they were at their peak over here. Queen played in Brazil in 1981 to its largest audience. Then Kiss came in 1983 and sold out stadiums. Shortly thereafter the band took the make-up off because they had to do something about their dwindling popularity. Queen's choice was to try new sounds. In both cases, Brazilian audiences were glad they caught both bands just before such drastic changes.

Why don't you continue the "Queen album by album" posts without the polls? This is like the "appreciation threads" and I'm enjoying it!

 

Glad you're enjoying it. I'll leave it for a few days so the other Queen threads die down a little, and then maybe do "appreciation threads" for the remaining albums.

 

Wow, Las Palabras... amongst the 3 least popular tracks???

 

I like this album a lot. I think "Life Is Real (Song For Lennon)" is a vastly underrated song of theirs. This album gets a lot of criticism from early Queen fans which is understandable considering the musical direction they were pursuing the last couple years. Under Pressure will always be a favorite of mine. I love that song and the video since I was a kid. Still do. Not a bad song on this album.

 

Oh good, my favourite Queen hobby horse. I LOVE 'Hot Space'. The only mistake they made - IMO - was to put all the 'rhythmic' tracks (I refuse to use the 'D' word) together on side one. The original UK vinyl sounds great, but my go-to for this album on CD is the 2001/04 Japanese MiniVinyl. In fact I'm going to listen to it right now. Voted for 'Back Chat' btw. And it's about time we had the 12'' mix on CD. I shall NEVER apologise for loving 'Hot Space' and the band should never apologise for making it, either, even though the recording of it wasn't a particularly good time for them for several reasons, which probably tinges their memories of it. They were s***hot on the UK tour, too.

 

I rate this album far higher than anything that comes after it. They remained a wonderful singles act through the rest of their career but this is the last album I can really listen to end to end. I think I'm probably not really a Queen fan so I tend to prefer the albums which are more straight ahead rock (Queen, Sheer Heart Attack, News of the World) or like this one an interesting genre experiment with some great performances. Give me this over Jazz for example any day of the week.

 

The poll is totally pointless if you include Under Pressure, because it's obviously the stronger track but it nearly has nothing to to with the album.

I wouldn't go as far as calling this album an underrated gem, but there are greats songs on it: Las Palabras de Amor, Back Chat, Put Out THe Fire (despite the lyrics), Action This Day. If you manage to go beyond the muddy mix, you'd discover some real diamonds in the rough.
Check out c_matt's remixes. They bring out a lot of welcome clarity on this recording.

And I love the way the band's faces are pictured on the cover, BTW.

 

Cool Cat easily.
My most beloved Queen album.

Honorable mentions to Put Out the Fire and Life Is Real

 

I voted for it, wanted to avoid the obvious 'Under Pressure' (figured everyone would pick that one).

Darryl

 

Utter bollocks! Embarrassing actually.