I never thought of it that way. You make a good point though, formulas are kind of boring and stupid. Why not take a few risks? Def Leppard did the very same thing in 1996 with the Slang Album . It didn’t quite pay off but it was still pretty good for what it was!
Queen reinvented themselves several times over their career. News of the World was the first time they did that, and they did so successfully. The Game was also a partial reinvention and while opinions differ on the album, it certainly worked out well for the band. Hot Space was an attempt to ride the heights of The Game's more funky tracks, but I feel they got the wrong message from that album's success and proceeded to create something that was a step in completely the wrong direction. There are some good ideas on Hot Space, but the execution is mediocre at best and it doesn't showcase any of the band's strengths. Afterwards Queen became more of a singles band than an albums band, which was a successful change in its own right, but it wasn't until The Miracle and Innuendo that they found back some of their old mojo and remembered what made Queen such a great band.
Changing a formula is good....if done well. And if done in a way that makes sense . As in you focus or dive deeper into a certain element of your influence or sound. Adopting a disco sound?....that's not changing one's formula well. Neither is jumping on a band wagon and trying to cynically capitalize on it. Hot space commits all those sins. Nevermind that Queen were not a dance music band, and disco was never an influence or part of Queens musical make up.
All I can say is that cocaine is a helluva drug, which strayed many an artist down the delusions of grandeur road, especially in the disco and post-disco era.
I'm 50/50 on this one, the tracks where Brian actually plays guitar are pretty decent my favourite being Las Palabras De Amour, unfortunately the disco based tracks are terrible and sounded dated even back then.
They tried something different, and it mostly didn't work. Here's the the thing though, it still has Freddie's vocals, which will always make it worth a listen.
Having listened to this on and off for about 30 years, I have to say the only real turkey on it is Body Language. The solo on Backchat is wonderful and it's a great single, Cool Cat is pretty cool. Dancer has an enjoyable groove, there's some lovely ballads on this album, a killer rocker and an all-time classic in Under Pressure. I don't rate this any lower than The Game or The Works. Nice review as always.
Been a Queen fan since 1973 and saw them 7 times with Fred, including the Hot Space tour - Backchat and Staying Power kicks serious butt live. I love the album and there are only four dance tracks on it. Freddie was totally immersed in the Munich disco scene by this time and I sure he would have left the band if he wasn't able to get the music that motivated him onto the album. I still play it regularly and I love the production, there is a really great bass floor to the sound. I will agree on one thing - Body Language is shit.
alot of queen songs with a faster tempo and such sound so much better live to the point i wish they did a album of old songs redone with a faster tempo and whatever else theyd learnt playing them live
Great review! As a lifelong Queen fan I can still recall playing Hot Space for the first time and thinking WTF. Apart from Put out the Fire, Las Palabras de Amor and the bolted-on sublime Under Pressure (which feels completely from a different time) it´s still pretty horrible stuff. Not sure Queen ever recovered to be honest. Had a few decent albums after this but absolutely nothing to compare to their magisterial 70´s output.
At the time I remember an interview with Brian where he said they had grown super-successful in the US and the UK, but with this album they wanted to conquer the music scene in other countries, particularly in South America. And he claimed that this album did go over well in South America, but lost them their fan base in the US and UK. I had been a huge fan of Queen starting with hearing the song _"Killer Queen"_ and then the full album of _"Sheer Heart Attack"._ They had a amazing run of excellent albums from that point up to _"The Game"._ I bought _"Hot Space"_ on the date of release, got it home and absolutely hated it. I still can't stand it. Maybe it's an OK album for some people, but not for me. Note that while I loved some albums like _"Saturday Night Fever",_ I hated at least 70% of all disco songs which dominated radio play lists at the time. IMO there were a few great songs in disco, and a whole lot of repetitive unimaginative crap. I think _"Under Pressure"_ is a great song, but I listen to that off a greatest hits collection instead of this album. I never considered that song as part of this album, given that it was released as a single in 1981 and I owned that single for around six months before this album was released.
I never thought it was that bad, but in fairness there's only one or two queen albums I've got anytime for. I don' think you can fault the album for being irrelevant - part of Queen's charm was their steadfast refusal to be relevant, but also Thriller came out 5 months after it and proved that dance music was far from dead.
Just listened to the full album for the first time and I found it enjoyable and refreshing. The kind of album you can do a workout to. I thought it sounded good and well produced. Yes, I could have had more of the traditional Brian May guitar sounds and more vocal harmonies but I’d give it a 4 out of 5 star ⭐️
There can be no argument about personal taste, but I totally disagree on you referring to the disco times of Saturday Night Fever, because Queen does not sound at all, or tries to sound like that kind of disco music. Michael Jackson had publicly stated that Hot Space inspired him for the Thriller album. A year later, in 1983 David Bowie came with let's dance, teaming up with Nile Rogers. So I do not agree that Hot Space was in the 'wrong' time. Every Queen album is different. What if Queen had not experimented and not tried different sounds, but something in the development from Jazz to The Game ot The Works? Then you would get critics saying there's not enough change. I am glad they made it, although for me Hot Space is their weakest studio album But it is stil a good album, far better and far diverse than most of the other artistst came with in the eighties.
Great review as usual, I feel like many artists Queen lost their way. Queen after Day at the Races , Bowie after Scary Monsters, ELP after Brain Salad Surgery , even Muse post Drones, all these artists have a sell by date , they might make the odd album which sounds decent but it never lasts forever.
I think News Of The World is their best album..... But I got into Queen with the Greatest Hits as a child and went backwards Only heard the singles on the radio as a child, must have been fascinating to hear them each upon release
If I had been a Queen fan from the start, I probably would have been disillusioned with a lot of their changes in direction and given up on them several times. However I didn't truly discover them until after Freddie's passing, so my view of Queen is more an overview of their entire career and it all blends together in a way that probably feels more cohesive than it actually was. Initially I was drawn to their 80's singles, but over time I came to appreciate their 70's albums more. I've never been a huge fan of News Of The World, though I've come to like it more in recent years, and I feel that Jazz is where their 70's formula started to wear out. So I feel that their reinvention into the 80's made sense for them as a band, though the misstep that was Hot Space took a lot of time to recover from.
Bowie didn't lose his way after Scary Monsters, Let's Dance was an amazing pop dance album. And Tonight and Never Let Me Down weren't even bad but those are the only ones where u could argue he lost his way, after that in the 90s he was back on track and started experimenting again. Some of his best albums were released post 90s
@@Leeenoughzeetrick Yeah, it was! I was 12 years old in 1975 when I first heard Bohemian Rhapsody on the radio...blew my mind. I eagerly awaited everything from the band all the way up to the last one.
Had all their albums up to and including "News of the World", which I didn't rate tbh. If I ever bother to listen to Queen these days it's always the first two albums. So thankfully I totally missed Hot Space.
To this day i really enjoy 'Hot Space'!! I don't always have issue with bands 'exploring' new avenues and this album does have some 'Funk' but makes it all the more interesting. Must have been difficult for a band like Queen to alter the formula and make themselves relevant within an ever changing industry.
Well, you can’t really say it went wrong. By 1982 Queen had been on the top of the world for a decade with some great albums and singles under their belts. The funk side started with “Fight From The Inside” from NOTW, “Fun It” from Jazz, but “Another One Bites The Dust” was such a big hit in 1980 it must have been a sign for the to go in that direction. Freddie was hanging out in gay clubs and nightclubs soaking up the camp disco cuts. “Body Language” was based on “Searchin” by Change. An Italio Disco Band that used Luther Vandross on their 1980 album “The Glow of Love”. I still like Hot Space for its crazy misadventures and shamelessness. Freddie’s vocals are incredible on it and I always loved the controversial aspect of it. Queen were capable of being a multifaceted beast albeit not 💯 percent convincing on Hot Space. Hot Space is like a harmless half nutty relative you invite to a Christmas party hoping they’ll behave but you know deep down they’ll be acting the weirdo after a few glasses of punch! Hot Space box set? I’m all over it if the cover lights up like the game Simon!!
It must be over 35 years since I last listened to it, which probably tells you all you need to know. But hearing those long forgotten titles you mention I'm going to have to dust it off right now. It's always interesting to listen to something for the first time after that sort of interval.
Well thank you, Barry, for the prompt - that was much better than I remembered! If that is disco, it is classy disco. Ok, Staying Power and Cool Cat suck and Life Is Real is a bit cringeworthy, but the rest was quite enjoyable, unmistakably Queen and Dancer was so enjoyable I listened to it twice. Not one for regular listening but I'll definitely dip into it again from time to time.
Could happen...sometimes a re-listen after many years triggers a light. That happened to me with Weezer's "Pinkerton"...hated it when it came out but 10 years later I gave it another spin and now I regard it as outstanding. Just as good as their "Blue" album, IMO.
Las Palabras del Amor, Put Out the Fire and Under Pressure are still better singles than 80% of bands have in their whole careers, so while Hot Space is a bad Queen album, it's just a meh album to me. And even then I kind of respect it for how bold it was. Honestly I think The Miracle is worse for just being kind of dull save for the title track and a couple of good singles.
For me personally, Jazz is the last Queen album i love and obsessed with. The Game just don't quite do it for me apart from the hits and Dragon Attack.
I quite like this album, although it's certainly not the album I listen to the most. It's a failure, but at least it's an interesting failure and that in itself gives me a soft spot for it. You can almost hear the behind-the-scenes political clashes as you listen to it. I still think it has some really nice moment, and had a song like Back Chat been featured on an album like The Game (which was still very rock oriented overall, and released two years before Hot Space) it would have been considered a very solid album track on its own merits, rather that being one of a batch of failed dance experiments by a rock band that temporarily lost the plot. Put Out The Fire and Calling All Girls are brilliant tracks, and I think Love Is Real is a rather touching, if slightly clumsy tribute to someone who was a genuine hero to the lads. I also have a soft spot for Cool Cat. Love the guitar on it and it kind of falls into the semi-tradition of Freddie indulging in a bit of falsetto crooning on the album's final track - in a way, it feels to me like a funky successor to My Melanchy Blues, and Dreamer's Ball in that sense. That being said, I haven't seen many Queen apologists that defend Body Language. 😅 I certainly do not defend it. Weirdly it was quite a big hit in North America (#11 in the US, #3 in Canada), and parts of Europe, mainly the Netherlands and the Nordic countries where it managed to land in the top 10. Especially considering how it was such a reflection of the German disco scene Freddie was deeply involved in, it's rather curious that this single did so well in North America. The far better Back Chat or Calling All Girls didn't get anywhere near that kind of success.
Looking back, forr me it's only important that Freddie and John were happy to make an album with the kind of music they liked. And although Roger and Brian didn't like it at all, they finally agreed. Sure it was a failure if you think in terms of sales figures, but it makes me happy that Freddie was able to realize his musical dreams in his short lifetime.
I just remember listening to the album for the first time and wanting to like it; forcing myself to draw out positive things to like about it but in the end, I couldn't do it. it really came across to me that "Queen" was not on the album. We have all seen how each band member when they have gone solo, are not as good as the whole entity of "Queen". Queen literally brings together the chemistry of four musicians and elevates the music in a way their individuality does not. Even Freddie loses something without "Queen". After this, Queen obviously move towards Pop rock to maintain commercial value. Brian himself talked about their music becoming "throwaway" music later in their career even though there were still good songs. In the second half of their career, all of the musical adventure was in the past. I suppose this was the era of the 1970s when most of the great adventures in rock were written and where the 1980s move to something less musical.
Way to squander their rising popularity in the USA. In retrospective, even Under Pressure don't fit anywhere in their discography. Queen never recovered from this, and I think The Works is nearly as bad if it weren't for the hit singles. A kind Of Magic is much maligned but I think it's their best output of the latter period after Innuendo, and even Innuendo has its moments of self indulgence. I got the coloured vinyl box set and I must say Hot Space looks seductive in blue vinyl, I may spin it several times just for that reason alone.
what rising popularity, theyd struggled with the usa for the entire time, took till near the end of queen to get back in the usas good books, they cancelled a tour in the usa early on cause oh how little faith they had in it during the time they quit trident
With Queen, every album was different, I still enjoy Hot Space, maybe because I am influenced as was the only time I saw Queen in concert, supporting this album at Milton Keynes, my first ever concert, not even a teenager. I love the album cover, and I Always remember Freddie seemed very relaxed talking about the album at the MK concert, it's an Album I still enjoy and in my own ranking it is better than albums that came afterwards, just in terms the amount of time I played them.
Let's be real -- Queen peaked with Night at The Opera. Does anyone think that the horrifically lame "Another One Bites The Dust" would fit on Sheer Heart Attack? So why is Hot Space such a surprise? It was the 80's and they were cashing in on the disco craze. I believe that appealed to Mercury because there was a big gay audience who were into the whole techno dance craze in the clubs and he embraced it. As with many bands, they achieved the most success after they had a hit and they milked it for all they could. But their best work was behind them. To me, Queen 2, Sheer and Night are fantastic representations of what they had to offer -- back when they were making a statement and not just cashing in on their fame. Everything after that is rehashed, cliche ridden pablum.
It contains some of Freddies best vocals and side two is solid. I always enjoyed it. Not a classic but fun. Also if you watch a live version of Staying Power it's a whole different animal. They should have done the studio versions more like that.
I bought it on vinyl back in 1982. It was different sounding and I ended up selling it at the record exchange in camden town a couple of years later. Last week I bought the studio collection, so all 15 albums, so I own it again!
Try as I might I just can’t enjoy the album but I do think it is Queen emerging into a vastly new tumultuous musical landscape of 80’s from punk, dance, synth etc and trying a whole bunch of experimentation. A bit like Sheer Heart Attack and News Of The World. It was a way to bring together a lot of new ideas which drove them forward
I think Roger Taylor summed it up saying Freddie & his personal manager said they wanted to do a disco/funk album for the clubs...... And i didn't !!! And believe me they shouldn't have as it's asbolute trash with nothing going for it !!!!
I am a massive Queen fan and a fan of the genre of disco/funk , so I quite like this album personally. However, I can see how this album went down like a plate of cold vomit when it was released in 1982. At the time the "disco sucks" movement had taken hold in the US and radio stations payed it safe by playing out MOR soft rock in 81/82. Disco was still prevalent in Europe, but even then it was still in it's death rattle.
I have never understood the hate this album gets,maybe it's because my first Queen album was live magic. But then I'm also a fan of fun in space and Mr.Bad Guy so plainly I'm in minority.
I’ve gone back and forth with Hot Space…mostly “back.” It’s just weird… very artsy fartsy and such a departure for them stylistically. Truly, the only album after HS that is worth mentioning, is Innuendo-they saved one of their best, for last…it’s a masterful album, I thought. They went out in a blaze of glory with that one.
I love Innuendo but I also think they channeled some heavy stuff with The Works. I still think A Kind Of Magic and The Miracle are good they just cant live up to their dominant period between 70 and 80
Innuendo is one of my favorite albums from Queen. The band gave it their all and they found a new depth to their songwriting. It's obviously colored by the knowledge that Freddie wouldn't be around for long, but it doesn't get depressing or nihilistic. The album is dark, but optimistic. In a way I am glad that Freddie got to say goodbye with an album that he was genuinely proud of.
I like Las Palabras De Amor. And I prefer the single remix of Back Chat which is available on the second disc of the 2011 digital remaster CD of Hot Space. It's the version you hear in the promotional video for Back Chat. You know, the one with Freddie prancing around with that large wrench.
I love this album, great production indeed. Something different from their other albums. I put it in the top half of their catalog. Even Body Language is a fun song, which is not to be taken as high art. Staying Power is great an Dancer has a great groove and great vocals by Fred.
While I agree that Queen's quality of songs went downhill after the Jazz album, I have to say that even their worst stuff is better than most bands' best. The most diverse group _EVER!!_
Since Another one Bites The Dust was a major hit in the USA, it was a matter of time they want to try out more of funky disco stuff. May and Taylor not so much i believe afterwards. Nothing to be worry about. Side one have some dance stuff and i really like Staying Power. Side 2 is far more traditional Queen stuff. I like Side 2 much better than what they produced on The Game and The Works. Hot Space is Absolutely not their strongest work (far from), but i can't say it's bad overall. " it's only a bloody album" Freddie said!
The album was mostly Freddie's work with help from John Deacon doing the bass, (of course), and some keyboard work. Brian and Roger weren't enamoured with a lot of the concepts of the songs but did contribute when requested to do so. The album wasn't very well received by Queen fans initially. It was one of those, 'WTF?', kind of things. It's essential that all bands evolve, so to speak, in that they have to do whatever they deem necessary to remain relevant for the time. It was the early 80's and synthesizer based music was becoming very prominent. So, it kind of stood to reason that they'd want to up the ante in that direction. However, with this album, they kind of went a bit too far away from what they were known for and it failed to hit the right chords with fans in general. I thought a couple of the singles taken from the album were ok, though. 'Las Palabras De Amore', and, of course, 'Under Pressure.' I wasn't too bothered about, 'Body Language', though as the constant references to sex where deemed a tad cringy for a young teenage boy at the time. And the video for it didn't help, either. I only got to hear the full album toward the end of the 80's, when I was completing my LP collection of their work, and I'd matured enough to see the merits of the songs, but even so, it tended not to get played too often. Nowadays, I've no issue with any of the tracks, as I see it for what it was. Queen doing their, 'thing', in 1982. Much like any other album, it's a snapshot of what the band where doing at the time and shouldn't be looked upon from a modernistic/hindsight perspective. As with all art, it's better to take away positives from it than to mire yourself with the negatives. If it's not your thing then don't play it. Let those who do like it enjoy it. There's nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
I really like "Calling all girls" with the nice accented guitars and classic Queen melody. "Body language" oddly enough was a decent hit in the U.S. going into in at number 11. It is a complete Freddie ego trip with a crap melody.
A real low point... I do remember Freddie saying (at Milton Keynes?) 'Hey, it's only a bloody record...' so maybe nothing to get too uptight about. All bands have to have a low water mark to show just how good their best stuff is I guess.
Pretty much agree - this has Freddie’s palm prints all over it! Just look at his ‘Mr. Bad Guy’ for more of the same. If evidence was ever required to show that Queen was not just Freddie, then this is surely it, love Freddie but I love Queen more!
I don't like the album myself and it's not a 'normal' Queen album but to paraphrase Freddie at the time. They were trying something different but it wasn't the end of all things. I saw Queen live at Milton Keynes when this came out and they included a couple of tracks but it was the usual Queen extravaganza. Panic not.
I've watched your channel often but never felt the need to comment...until now! For a usually enlightened commentator I'm surprised you've fallen into the usual 'disco' clichés for this album - it's nothing of the sort. There's plenty of guitar and some really great tracks like Dancer and Backchat. Oh, yeah, and Staying Power is great too! Whilst Hot Space is clearly no Queen II, none of Queen's albums after this are anywhere near as good. Although I obviously disagree on this one, I do enjoy your videos and respect your knowledgeable opinions - thanks for some interesting watches.
They tried to make a "club album". John was into the funk and Freddie was uh...making the rounds. I certainly agree there's not too much "staying power" with this album. When they released Jazz, I knew the days of what they produced with the first four albums was over...it actually bummed me out. "A Kind Of Magic" is actually the best thing they did after 1976, IMO.
@@GrouRocks Check out 'Queen- The Ultimate Illustrated History Of The Crown Kings Of Rock' by Phil Sutcliffe. It explains the link between SIMON and the album cover.
Like you, I've always thought that 'When The Going Gets Tough...' (from 1985) rips off 'Las Palabras de Amor'. As does UB40's 'Red Red Wine' (with the keyboard riff) from the following year. I'm surprised to learn that some Queen fans don't like 'Las Palabras...'; I've always thought of it as classic Queen.
I like it weakest tracks were the dreadful Body Language and the Roger Taylor tracks, but Back Track, Staying Power, Los Palabas, Put Out the Fire, Cool Cat and of course Under Pressure are all terrific. No doubt it was driven by Freddie and to a degree John.
I never bought this album, but I have heard the songs on TH-cam and radio. I've never cared for Freddie's overly sexualized songs and "Body Language" is a prime example; "Get Down, Make Love" is even worse, but that's from another album. "Put Out the Fire" is classic Queen and I can listen to "Las Palabras De Amor", "Back Chat" and "Staying Power". I'm not sure why, but "Under Pressure" isn't a favorite of mine; maybe like "One Vision", it sounds like it was 100% created extemporaneously in the studio. I've read that Hot Space and the video of "I Want to Break Free" tanked Queen's popularity in the USA, and there is truth to that, but in the 1980's Queen's demographic changed: the devoted fans that bought their first 3 albums (1973 to 1974), were now parents trying to raise young families and grow their careers, so purchasing music had to compete with paying rent, food, transportation, etc...
Sparks' No. 1 in Heaven is a better example of a rock band going the disco route. I feel like if Queen had combined the multi layered vocals and guitar harmonies of their earlier work with the Moroder style synths and pulsating rhythms, they would have had a more successful disco album. It also would have helped if they did it a couple of years earlier.
Hot Space came out at such a weird time and to be in the middle of classic albums The Game and The Works just magnifies its flaws even more. Queen were coming off the huge successes of A Night At The Opera all the way up to The Game and continued to try and progress. But unfortunately Hot Space regressed too much. About half the album is good but for me it's not one of the Queen albums I go to. I think Calling All Girls, Action This Day and Under Pressure are stand out tracks for a discombobulated album. Plus the cover looks like the band was playing Twister and thought "why don't we make this the album cover." Well they went right back in the right direction with the powerhouse of The Works.
"A kind of calculated retreat," BOOM. Perfect. I've thought the same thing for decades about The Works, but that's the most succinctly I've ever heard it put.
I remember the 11 year old me hearing Hot Space for the first time and thinking, "Oh, this sounds a bit weird for Queen." I also remember the thirtysomething me firing up the album for the first time in an age and thinking, "Yeah, this really isn't all that great, is it?" By this point, I'd already discovered the formula for what makes a good album. It kind of goes like this: - If the first three songs are hit singles, the album is mostly "meh" - The later in the album the hit singles are, the better it is likely to be - If the biggest (or only) hit is the last song on the album, the whole thing is trash And that last one pretty much sums up Hot Space. All that said, though, I'd still argue that this is only a bad album for Queen. When compared with albums in general, it's actually somewhere in the realms of okay. Granted, some of the songs are truly dreadful in any context, but there's more than enough on here to make it listenable. If you're sticking it on and expecting Queen then yes, disappointment is imminent, but as something to just throw on regardless of who it is, it's not that bad. As bad Queen albums go, this isn't the worst. That honour goes to the Flash soundtrack. Some soundtrack albums can be phenomenal pieces of work and even Queen's own A Kind Of Magic is, for my money at least, a bit of a masterpiece. But Flash is a lazy, throwaway slab of vinyl that never fails to disappoint. The film itself is B movie cheese, managing to be fun and watchable in that "so bad it's good" vein, but the album retains none of that. As for The Works, I view that album in the same vein as The Cure's Japanese Whispers. Both are akin to albums designed for those who didn't buy the singles (more so for The Cure's album), and both came on the back of an album that was hampered by the band being in a really bad place, with their preceding album Pornography not exactly receiving critical acclaim at the time. Both The Works and Japanese Whispers got the bands back on track, too, despite playing it relatively safe.
Hot Space is one of my favourite Queen albums and i have them all . It was so refreshing to hear them attempt more dance orientated music Body language reached number 11 in the Billboard Hot 100 25 in the UK , i thought it would have reached number 1 here.Cool cat is excellent too with a great guitar work . The Works which followed was much more standard Queen , but where they ever that standard anyway , there were always surprises . I enjoyed your review and the interview you did with Francis Rossi the other day . I remember the commotion in the Quo fan base when Marguerita time came out , such was the depature in style.
The Lennon tribute is great, underrated album, basically a Freddie solo album......even Queen's worst song is better than most critics could write, that's my problem with critics, just enjoy the music and being alive. Cool T shirt; cheer up mate........
I don't think I ever really got over the disappointment of the 1st play though. I was a lot younger then of course but never really went back. With the exception of Put Out the Fire - there was a lot of rewinding & playing of that one. Still love it. (Under Pressure being in a completely different league of its own.)
What I've found is the og's who were around for Queen, mostly detest 'Hot Space'. Whereas millennials and gen z's mostly think it's actually quite a quality album. And we're always right so 🤷🏻♂️😉😂
Successful style and genre changes can be done. Look at the 90s albums of U2. Actung Baby, Zooropa and Pop. All brilliant albums from a band well established for more traditional rock music.
Honestly, Hot Space is not as bad as I thought it would be when I first listened to it. I think Staying Power, Body Language and Calling All Girls are quite disappointing for Queen’s own standards. However, Life Is Real (Song For Lennon), Put Out The Fire, Las Palabras Del Amor and Cool Cat are at least enjoyable and ok songs. Under Pressure is obvs a classic. The second side is easier to listen to In my opinion.
I remember feeling, KNOWING, that one of my absolute favorite bands had take a turn…for the worst? I KNEW..I didn’t like the feel, and hated the look (video) of “Body Language “. It was not the Queen…I had loved as a kid. I was saddened more than anything when I heard these tunes. Time has been kinder to this record in my mind, as a few of the songs you CAN hear how great of songwriters they were even when not in sync. Calling All Girls, Las Palabras De Amor, Put Out The Fire, all solid. Back Chat, Cool Cat, Dancer….not as much.
Somebody, somewhere in the Queen camp (🤭) must have thought 'Body Language' was a good track as they had the audacity to release it as a single!! Mercury and Deacon were the driving forces behind this album; May and Taylor weren't keen.
"Put Out The Fire" was good and sounded like the Queen of old. "Las Perlabras De Amor" is my favorite and of course "Under Pressure" is a classic. But the rest of Hot Space ain't worth a fudge cycle!
I stopped buying or listening any Queen album after they released “Another one bites the dust”. I just could not cope with the “disco” direction shift. SonQueen for me finished with Jazz album.
What you didnt mention was although "disco stuff" had gone 1982 was the beginning of high compression recordings of which this album reflects.Even the likes of ACDC and more so ZZ Top took on board and of course Dire Straits most famously.It was all about crispness and highly compressed sound that won the battle at the time.You did it or you died at pop level and Queen were a pop outfit.
The last true glimpse of what the band Queen originally stood for...was in the song "The Hero". That was Queen's "last hoorah" as the band formally known as Queen....before the 80's got ahold of them and ripped them a "new" one
queen never found the subtle intricacies after jazz.dead on time never gets a mention..and taylors 1st solo album gets better with time..interlude in Constantinople is class..who needs a podcast to know what you know...
The problem with calling this album 'disco' is that it's really not disco. It's more of a white funk album... not like that helps it much. (If it had been disco, it might have at least been fun in retrospect). Under Pressure is a great closer, but that track was only tacked on as an afterthought once it had already been a hit standalone single the year before. I still enjoy Put Out The Fire and the ballad Las Palabras De Amor, while most of the tracks that appeared live on the 1982 tour were far better than the albums versions. While Under Pressure was played until the final Queen tour in 1986, I believe only one song - Staying Power - was performed after the 1982 tour... for only a few dates on the Works tour in 1984. Queen has always been my favorite band, and will remain so, but if I hear Body Language or Cool Cat ever again, I'll be forced to jam pencils in my ears!
The October and November 82 versions of Body Language are much more entertaining than the studio original, esp. Tokorozawa. My problem with this stuff isn’t that it's "gay club" music (though that is unappealing to me), it's that songs like that hit differently in a post-AIDS era. Freddie singing about and vaguely acting out the behavior that led to his death is very uncomfortable (and sad).
They were always a pastiche band; their bigger albums all had pastiches of other eras and styles ( which is a trope in pop/rock anyway) and it seems this one didn't work whereas the others did. Maybe the con was exposed.
Not being aware of the club scene or any of that stuff back then, I always thought this was an attempt to further the sound they had such great success with from "The Game". "Another One Bites the Dust" was a massive # 1 in the US, whereas a more traditional Queen single "Play the Game" didn't even crack the top 40 here. I've always looked at this album as having a few good songs, all on side 2, and a bunch of things that don't really do it for me, though some of the more dance oriented tunes are catchy. I do dislike "Cool Cat" greatly. Freddie's falsetto voice is like someone buggering a cat for me. That said, "Put Out the Fire" is a solid track. I love "Life Is Real" and who could not resist "Under Pressure", a song that I actually didn't care for too much when it came out but I like quite well now. The rest of it doesn't really work too well for me. Of course, it's all subjective. Good video.
It wasn't just Queen that were at it in the early '80s. Robert Palmer's 'Pride' comes to mind, even the marvellous John Martyn produced some horrid early synth-sequenced stuff around then, like on 'Well Kept Secret'
I can’t believe that one online critic counts “Hot Space” in the top five of their top 20 Queen albums, with “ Body language “ their favourite track. Erm!!! When the the band shun their own creation , that should be enough to tell you it’s F*#kin shite! I agree with your opinion of “Jazz”. The band got so far up their own arse , they could see Zeppelin’s feet!
To be perfectly honest, all of the albums after News of the World, with the possible exception of The Game, were highly dubious. (Just my opinion, of course.)
Try listening to it with a different track order…makes it sound much better IMO….1. Put out the fire. 2. Dancer. 3. Life is real. 4. Back chat. 5. Action this day. 6. Las palabras de amor. 7. Staying power 8. Calling all girls. 9. Body language. 10. Cool cat. 11. Under pressure.
A Night at the Opera was the summit, preceded by three brilliant albums. But then it was a slow but steady decline until The Game, and then it was all over. After that, I stopped listening. How did a span of just ten years go from The Prophet Song to…It’s a Kind of Magic? Awful. Tragic.
This album killed Queen's foothold in the US. And for all the things Queen did as good or better than anyone else - performing R&B was NOT one of them. Personally this Record broke my heart. For me "Jazz" and "The Game" were slowly straying from the awesomeness of peak 70s Queen, they still had plenty of to offer that was uniquely "Queen". "Hot Space" was antithetical to all the things that made me love the band
I cant handle anything on this album then beyond Put out the fire and las palapras de amor. I dont count under pressure. Since early pressings did not had under pressure..
I actually quite like some of Hot Space. There are some good bits on it Back Chat, Put Out the Fire, Staying Power, Los Palabras, Cool Cat, Life Is Real are all pretty good and obviously Under Pressure. Dancer, Calling All Girls, Body Language and Action this Day are all pretty poor though, ironically, the May/ Taylor contributions are the worst one of the reasons that don’t want to remember it perhaps? However that keyboard work did lead to things like Radio Ga Ga so can’t have been all bad. Body Language was a terrible lead single and I agree the video was even worse - Back Chat I think would have been a better choice, sadly Queens career in the USA never recovered from this. The next couple of albums whilst some great highs like Radio Ga Ga, Hard Life, Kind of Magic and Who wants to live forever? were patchy with dross like Man on the Prowl, Pain is So Close to Pleasure. Only with The Miracle and then Innuendo did Queen get back to consistent quality albums. However don’t forget even the mighty Game had some filler like Don’t Try Suicide and Coming Soon are pretty mediocre IMHV.
Hot Space is a great Album with funky music. Band that never change their formula are boring!
The difference is that the change has to work for the band, it didn’t.
I never thought of it that way. You make a good point though, formulas are kind of boring and stupid. Why not take a few risks? Def Leppard did the very same thing in 1996 with the Slang Album . It didn’t quite pay off but it was still pretty good for what it was!
Queen reinvented themselves several times over their career. News of the World was the first time they did that, and they did so successfully. The Game was also a partial reinvention and while opinions differ on the album, it certainly worked out well for the band. Hot Space was an attempt to ride the heights of The Game's more funky tracks, but I feel they got the wrong message from that album's success and proceeded to create something that was a step in completely the wrong direction. There are some good ideas on Hot Space, but the execution is mediocre at best and it doesn't showcase any of the band's strengths. Afterwards Queen became more of a singles band than an albums band, which was a successful change in its own right, but it wasn't until The Miracle and Innuendo that they found back some of their old mojo and remembered what made Queen such a great band.
Changing a formula is good....if done well. And if done in a way that makes sense . As in you focus or dive deeper into a certain element of your influence or sound. Adopting a disco sound?....that's not changing one's formula well. Neither is jumping on a band wagon and trying to cynically capitalize on it. Hot space commits all those sins. Nevermind that Queen were not a dance music band, and disco was never an influence or part of Queens musical make up.
@@Astfgl and Body Language…omg…Body Language is by far the worst song Queen have ever made.
Well, it's very idficult for anybody, even Queen, to equal albums like Queen I, Queen II, Sheer Heart Attack and A Night at The Opera.
All I can say is that cocaine is a helluva drug, which strayed many an artist down the delusions of grandeur road, especially in the disco and post-disco era.
I'm 50/50 on this one, the tracks where Brian actually plays guitar are pretty decent my favourite being Las Palabras De Amour, unfortunately the disco based tracks are terrible and sounded dated even back then.
They tried something different, and it mostly didn't work. Here's the the thing though, it still has Freddie's vocals, which will always make it worth a listen.
Having listened to this on and off for about 30 years, I have to say the only real turkey on it is Body Language. The solo on Backchat is wonderful and it's a great single, Cool Cat is pretty cool. Dancer has an enjoyable groove, there's some lovely ballads on this album, a killer rocker and an all-time classic in Under Pressure. I don't rate this any lower than The Game or The Works. Nice review as always.
agreed, and Cool Cat had something of a 'Lovers Reggae' touch, that was quite big at the time. Great tune
I've seen professional dancers perform to BL and it was amazing.
I have to say, I was totally surprised how well it worked.
Change of direction? Yes. Bad? No. I like it better than some of their later material.
Been a Queen fan since 1973 and saw them 7 times with Fred, including the Hot Space tour - Backchat and Staying Power kicks serious butt live. I love the album and there are only four dance tracks on it. Freddie was totally immersed in the Munich disco scene by this time and I sure he would have left the band if he wasn't able to get the music that motivated him onto the album. I still play it regularly and I love the production, there is a really great bass floor to the sound. I will agree on one thing - Body Language is shit.
alot of queen songs with a faster tempo and such sound so much better live to the point i wish they did a album of old songs redone with a faster tempo and whatever else theyd learnt playing them live
Great review! As a lifelong Queen fan I can still recall playing Hot Space for the first time and thinking WTF. Apart from Put out the Fire, Las Palabras de Amor and the bolted-on sublime Under Pressure (which feels completely from a different time) it´s still pretty horrible stuff. Not sure Queen ever recovered to be honest. Had a few decent albums after this but absolutely nothing to compare to their magisterial 70´s output.
The song writing declined drastically from News Of The World onwards. Freddie was more interested in partying by that stage.
They jumped into 80s 90s Queen. A few good songs, but basically never a 70s Rick band ever again.
They did great sales wise and touring in the U.K. and other countries in the 80's, but they definitely lost the U.S. big time.
@@63mckenzie Jazz and The Game had some excellent song writing Overplayed or not Is "Don't Stop Me Know" a decline in song writing?
@@Leeenoughzeetrick Compared to earlier material, yes.
All Queen albums sound amazing.
sheer heart attack is sheer rubbish
@@garyinspainthat's their best album to me..
I think in the 80s queen was a band with great singels but the albums all had a lot of filler songs
@@garyinspain you what? sheer heart attack? fight me
At the time I remember an interview with Brian where he said they had grown super-successful in the US and the UK, but with this album they wanted to conquer the music scene in other countries, particularly in South America. And he claimed that this album did go over well in South America, but lost them their fan base in the US and UK.
I had been a huge fan of Queen starting with hearing the song _"Killer Queen"_ and then the full album of _"Sheer Heart Attack"._ They had a amazing run of excellent albums from that point up to _"The Game"._ I bought _"Hot Space"_ on the date of release, got it home and absolutely hated it. I still can't stand it. Maybe it's an OK album for some people, but not for me. Note that while I loved some albums like _"Saturday Night Fever",_ I hated at least 70% of all disco songs which dominated radio play lists at the time. IMO there were a few great songs in disco, and a whole lot of repetitive unimaginative crap.
I think _"Under Pressure"_ is a great song, but I listen to that off a greatest hits collection instead of this album. I never considered that song as part of this album, given that it was released as a single in 1981 and I owned that single for around six months before this album was released.
I never thought it was that bad, but in fairness there's only one or two queen albums I've got anytime for. I don' think you can fault the album for being irrelevant - part of Queen's charm was their steadfast refusal to be relevant, but also Thriller came out 5 months after it and proved that dance music was far from dead.
The only song that had NO charm was of course “Body Language”!
Just listened to the full album for the first time and I found it enjoyable and refreshing. The kind of album you can do a workout to. I thought it sounded good and well produced. Yes, I could have had more of the traditional Brian May guitar sounds and more vocal harmonies but I’d give it a 4 out of 5 star ⭐️
Agree it’s great but I understand why at the time Queen fans loathed it
Thanks Barrie, for another witty and profound review. I enjoyed it very much, and dare I say Hot Space is one of my favourite Queen albums.
There can be no argument about personal taste, but I totally disagree on you referring to the disco times of Saturday Night Fever, because Queen does not sound at all, or tries to sound like that kind of disco music. Michael Jackson had publicly stated that Hot Space inspired him for the Thriller album. A year later, in 1983 David Bowie came with let's dance, teaming up with Nile Rogers. So I do not agree that Hot Space was in the 'wrong' time. Every Queen album is different. What if Queen had not experimented and not tried different sounds, but something in the development from Jazz to The Game ot The Works? Then you would get critics saying there's not enough change. I am glad they made it, although for me Hot Space is their weakest studio album But it is stil a good album, far better and far diverse than most of the other artistst came with in the eighties.
Great review as usual, I feel like many artists Queen lost their way. Queen after Day at the Races , Bowie after Scary Monsters, ELP after Brain Salad Surgery , even Muse post Drones, all these artists have a sell by date , they might make the odd album which sounds decent but it never lasts forever.
I think News Of The World is their best album..... But I got into Queen with the Greatest Hits as a child and went backwards Only heard the singles on the radio as a child, must have been fascinating to hear them each upon release
If I had been a Queen fan from the start, I probably would have been disillusioned with a lot of their changes in direction and given up on them several times. However I didn't truly discover them until after Freddie's passing, so my view of Queen is more an overview of their entire career and it all blends together in a way that probably feels more cohesive than it actually was. Initially I was drawn to their 80's singles, but over time I came to appreciate their 70's albums more. I've never been a huge fan of News Of The World, though I've come to like it more in recent years, and I feel that Jazz is where their 70's formula started to wear out. So I feel that their reinvention into the 80's made sense for them as a band, though the misstep that was Hot Space took a lot of time to recover from.
Bowie didn't lose his way after Scary Monsters, Let's Dance was an amazing pop dance album. And Tonight and Never Let Me Down weren't even bad but those are the only ones where u could argue he lost his way, after that in the 90s he was back on track and started experimenting again. Some of his best albums were released post 90s
@@Leeenoughzeetrick Yeah, it was! I was 12 years old in 1975 when I first heard Bohemian Rhapsody on the radio...blew my mind. I eagerly awaited everything from the band all the way up to the last one.
Had all their albums up to and including "News of the World", which I didn't rate tbh.
If I ever bother to listen to Queen these days it's always the first two albums.
So thankfully I totally missed Hot Space.
Will give them a spin up to the first 5 ..
Yeah I agree , News is where they lost their way and it was downhill all the way from there , very hit and miss when before it was all hit !
6:25 I think it was more Freddie's "Friends, Romans and countrymen, lend me your rears." that was the problem at the time.
Last good Queen album was Sheer Heart Attack. Could make a good cd length collection out of all the others.
To this day i really enjoy 'Hot Space'!! I don't always have issue with bands 'exploring' new avenues and this album does have some 'Funk' but makes it all the more interesting. Must have been difficult for a band like Queen to alter the formula and make themselves relevant within an ever changing industry.
Well, you can’t really say it went wrong. By 1982 Queen had been on the top of the world for a decade with some great albums and singles under their belts. The funk side started with “Fight From The Inside” from NOTW, “Fun It” from Jazz, but “Another One Bites The Dust” was such a big hit in 1980 it must have been a sign for the to go in that direction. Freddie was hanging out in gay clubs and nightclubs soaking up the camp disco cuts. “Body Language” was based on “Searchin” by Change. An Italio Disco Band that used Luther Vandross on their 1980 album “The Glow of Love”.
I still like Hot Space for its crazy misadventures and shamelessness. Freddie’s vocals are incredible on it and I always loved the controversial aspect of it. Queen were capable of being a multifaceted beast albeit not 💯 percent convincing on Hot Space. Hot Space is like a harmless half nutty relative you invite to a Christmas party hoping they’ll behave but you know deep down they’ll be acting the weirdo after a few glasses of punch! Hot Space box set? I’m all over it if the cover lights up like the game Simon!!
It must be over 35 years since I last listened to it, which probably tells you all you need to know. But hearing those long forgotten titles you mention I'm going to have to dust it off right now. It's always interesting to listen to something for the first time after that sort of interval.
Well thank you, Barry, for the prompt - that was much better than I remembered! If that is disco, it is classy disco. Ok, Staying Power and Cool Cat suck and Life Is Real is a bit cringeworthy, but the rest was quite enjoyable, unmistakably Queen and Dancer was so enjoyable I listened to it twice. Not one for regular listening but I'll definitely dip into it again from time to time.
Could happen...sometimes a re-listen after many years triggers a light. That happened to me with Weezer's "Pinkerton"...hated it when it came out but 10 years later I gave it another spin and now I regard it as outstanding. Just as good as their "Blue" album, IMO.
All us hippies in the 70s had 2 albums mostly; News Of The World and Sheer Heart Attack
Las Palabras del Amor, Put Out the Fire and Under Pressure are still better singles than 80% of bands have in their whole careers, so while Hot Space is a bad Queen album, it's just a meh album to me. And even then I kind of respect it for how bold it was. Honestly I think The Miracle is worse for just being kind of dull save for the title track and a couple of good singles.
Nice comment, I agree actually I'd rather listen to this than The Miracle
The Miracle is better than Hot Space but I love all of Queen's albums.
For me personally, Jazz is the last Queen album i love and obsessed with. The Game just don't quite do it for me apart from the hits and Dragon Attack.
I quite like this album, although it's certainly not the album I listen to the most. It's a failure, but at least it's an interesting failure and that in itself gives me a soft spot for it. You can almost hear the behind-the-scenes political clashes as you listen to it. I still think it has some really nice moment, and had a song like Back Chat been featured on an album like The Game (which was still very rock oriented overall, and released two years before Hot Space) it would have been considered a very solid album track on its own merits, rather that being one of a batch of failed dance experiments by a rock band that temporarily lost the plot.
Put Out The Fire and Calling All Girls are brilliant tracks, and I think Love Is Real is a rather touching, if slightly clumsy tribute to someone who was a genuine hero to the lads.
I also have a soft spot for Cool Cat. Love the guitar on it and it kind of falls into the semi-tradition of Freddie indulging in a bit of falsetto crooning on the album's final track - in a way, it feels to me like a funky successor to My Melanchy Blues, and Dreamer's Ball in that sense.
That being said, I haven't seen many Queen apologists that defend Body Language. 😅 I certainly do not defend it.
Weirdly it was quite a big hit in North America (#11 in the US, #3 in Canada), and parts of Europe, mainly the Netherlands and the Nordic countries where it managed to land in the top 10. Especially considering how it was such a reflection of the German disco scene Freddie was deeply involved in, it's rather curious that this single did so well in North America.
The far better Back Chat or Calling All Girls didn't get anywhere near that kind of success.
Looking back, forr me it's only important that Freddie and John were happy to make an album with the kind of music they liked.
And although Roger and Brian didn't like it at all, they finally agreed.
Sure it was a failure if you think in terms of sales figures, but it makes me happy that Freddie was able to realize his musical dreams in his short lifetime.
I just remember listening to the album for the first time and wanting to like it; forcing myself to draw out positive things to like about it but in the end, I couldn't do it.
it really came across to me that "Queen" was not on the album. We have all seen how each band member when they have gone solo, are not as good as the whole entity of "Queen".
Queen literally brings together the chemistry of four musicians and elevates the music in a way their individuality does not. Even Freddie loses something without "Queen".
After this, Queen obviously move towards Pop rock to maintain commercial value. Brian himself talked about their music becoming "throwaway" music later in their career even though there were still good songs.
In the second half of their career, all of the musical adventure was in the past. I suppose this was the era of the 1970s when most of the great adventures in rock were written and where the 1980s move to something less musical.
I couldn't have said this better myself.... 👍
Way to squander their rising popularity in the USA. In retrospective, even Under Pressure don't fit anywhere in their discography.
Queen never recovered from this, and I think The Works is nearly as bad if it weren't for the hit singles. A kind Of Magic is much maligned but I think it's their best output of the latter period after Innuendo, and even Innuendo has its moments of self indulgence.
I got the coloured vinyl box set and I must say Hot Space looks seductive in blue vinyl, I may spin it several times just for that reason alone.
what rising popularity, theyd struggled with the usa for the entire time, took till near the end of queen to get back in the usas good books, they cancelled a tour in the usa early on cause oh how little faith they had in it during the time they quit trident
With Queen, every album was different, I still enjoy Hot Space, maybe because I am influenced as was the only time I saw Queen in concert, supporting this album at Milton Keynes, my first ever concert, not even a teenager. I love the album cover, and I Always remember Freddie seemed very relaxed talking about the album at the MK concert, it's an Album I still enjoy and in my own ranking it is better than albums that came afterwards, just in terms the amount of time I played them.
Let's be real -- Queen peaked with Night at The Opera. Does anyone think that the horrifically lame "Another One Bites The Dust" would fit on Sheer Heart Attack? So why is Hot Space such a surprise? It was the 80's and they were cashing in on the disco craze. I believe that appealed to Mercury because there was a big gay audience who were into the whole techno dance craze in the clubs and he embraced it. As with many bands, they achieved the most success after they had a hit and they milked it for all they could. But their best work was behind them. To me, Queen 2, Sheer and Night are fantastic representations of what they had to offer -- back when they were making a statement and not just cashing in on their fame. Everything after that is rehashed, cliche ridden pablum.
It contains some of Freddies best vocals and side two is solid. I always enjoyed it. Not a classic but fun. Also if you watch a live version of Staying Power it's a whole different animal. They should have done the studio versions more like that.
I bought it on vinyl back in 1982. It was different sounding and I ended up selling it at the record exchange in camden town a couple of years later. Last week I bought the studio collection, so all 15 albums, so I own it again!
Try as I might I just can’t enjoy the album but I do think it is Queen emerging into a vastly new tumultuous musical landscape of 80’s from punk, dance, synth etc and trying a whole bunch of experimentation. A bit like Sheer Heart Attack and News Of The World. It was a way to bring together a lot of new ideas which drove them forward
I think Roger Taylor summed it up saying Freddie & his personal manager said they wanted to do a disco/funk album for the clubs...... And i didn't !!! And believe me they shouldn't have as it's asbolute trash with nothing going for it !!!!
I am a massive Queen fan and a fan of the genre of disco/funk , so I quite like this album personally. However, I can see how this album went down like a plate of cold vomit when it was released in 1982. At the time the "disco sucks" movement had taken hold in the US and radio stations payed it safe by playing out MOR soft rock in 81/82. Disco was still prevalent in Europe, but even then it was still in it's death rattle.
I never did understand the criticisms of this album. Really enjoy it!
I have never understood the hate this album gets,maybe it's because my first Queen album was live magic.
But then I'm also a fan of fun in space and Mr.Bad Guy so plainly I'm in minority.
Fun in Space is a classic album. Strange Frontier is pretty decent too.
Side 1 is basically gay club music. It can't be a coincidence that the "gayest" music Queen ever recorded is also their most hated by rock fans.
I’ve gone back and forth with Hot Space…mostly “back.” It’s just weird… very artsy fartsy and such a departure for them stylistically. Truly, the only album after HS that is worth mentioning, is Innuendo-they saved one of their best, for last…it’s a masterful album, I thought. They went out in a blaze of glory with that one.
I love Innuendo but I also think they channeled some heavy stuff with The Works. I still think A Kind Of Magic and The Miracle are good they just cant live up to their dominant period between 70 and 80
"Artsy Tartsy"
Innuendo is one of my favorite albums from Queen. The band gave it their all and they found a new depth to their songwriting. It's obviously colored by the knowledge that Freddie wouldn't be around for long, but it doesn't get depressing or nihilistic. The album is dark, but optimistic. In a way I am glad that Freddie got to say goodbye with an album that he was genuinely proud of.
I like Las Palabras De Amor. And I prefer the single remix of Back Chat which is available on the second disc of the 2011 digital remaster CD of Hot Space. It's the version you hear in the promotional video for Back Chat. You know, the one with Freddie prancing around with that large wrench.
I love this album, great production indeed. Something different from their other albums. I put it in the top half of their catalog. Even Body Language is a fun song, which is not to be taken as high art. Staying Power is great an Dancer has a great groove and great vocals by Fred.
While I agree that Queen's quality of songs went downhill after the Jazz album, I have to say that even their worst stuff is better than most bands' best. The most diverse group _EVER!!_
Boy, you were very kind to them about that 'mistake'. As always, well spoken.
Hot space has some really good tracks and some werk onces. Just listen and u Will see what I mean. Its not that negative completely folks
Agree the album shows Freddies ego at its worst. 🤘✌️🏴🇦🇺
Since Another one Bites The Dust was a major hit in the USA, it was a matter of time they want to try out more of funky disco stuff. May and Taylor not so much i believe afterwards. Nothing to be worry about. Side one have some dance stuff and i really like Staying Power. Side 2 is far more traditional Queen stuff. I like Side 2 much better than what they produced on The Game and The Works. Hot Space is Absolutely not their strongest work (far from), but i can't say it's bad overall. " it's only a bloody album" Freddie said!
The album was mostly Freddie's work with help from John Deacon doing the bass, (of course), and some keyboard work. Brian and Roger weren't enamoured with a lot of the concepts of the songs but did contribute when requested to do so. The album wasn't very well received by Queen fans initially. It was one of those, 'WTF?', kind of things. It's essential that all bands evolve, so to speak, in that they have to do whatever they deem necessary to remain relevant for the time. It was the early 80's and synthesizer based music was becoming very prominent. So, it kind of stood to reason that they'd want to up the ante in that direction. However, with this album, they kind of went a bit too far away from what they were known for and it failed to hit the right chords with fans in general. I thought a couple of the singles taken from the album were ok, though. 'Las Palabras De Amore', and, of course, 'Under Pressure.' I wasn't too bothered about, 'Body Language', though as the constant references to sex where deemed a tad cringy for a young teenage boy at the time. And the video for it didn't help, either. I only got to hear the full album toward the end of the 80's, when I was completing my LP collection of their work, and I'd matured enough to see the merits of the songs, but even so, it tended not to get played too often. Nowadays, I've no issue with any of the tracks, as I see it for what it was. Queen doing their, 'thing', in 1982. Much like any other album, it's a snapshot of what the band where doing at the time and shouldn't be looked upon from a modernistic/hindsight perspective. As with all art, it's better to take away positives from it than to mire yourself with the negatives. If it's not your thing then don't play it. Let those who do like it enjoy it.
There's nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
I really like "Calling all girls" with the nice accented guitars and classic Queen melody. "Body language" oddly enough was a decent hit in the U.S. going into in at number 11. It is a complete Freddie ego trip with a crap melody.
A real low point... I do remember Freddie saying (at Milton Keynes?) 'Hey, it's only a bloody record...' so maybe nothing to get too uptight about. All bands have to have a low water mark to show just how good their best stuff is I guess.
Hot Space was a Hot Turd. You could mostly blame German cocaine for this Hot mess....
Pretty much agree - this has Freddie’s palm prints all over it! Just look at his ‘Mr. Bad Guy’ for more of the same. If evidence was ever required to show that Queen was not just Freddie, then this is surely it, love Freddie but I love Queen more!
I don't like the album myself and it's not a 'normal' Queen album but to paraphrase Freddie at the time. They were trying something different but it wasn't the end of all things. I saw Queen live at Milton Keynes when this came out and they included a couple of tracks but it was the usual Queen extravaganza. Panic not.
Do you remember Freddie saying something like "We're going to do some tracks from Hot Space...you don't like it"
I've watched your channel often but never felt the need to comment...until now! For a usually enlightened commentator I'm surprised you've fallen into the usual 'disco' clichés for this album - it's nothing of the sort. There's plenty of guitar and some really great tracks like Dancer and Backchat. Oh, yeah, and Staying Power is great too! Whilst Hot Space is clearly no Queen II, none of Queen's albums after this are anywhere near as good. Although I obviously disagree on this one, I do enjoy your videos and respect your knowledgeable opinions - thanks for some interesting watches.
I'm glad you engaged... hope you are well.
They tried to make a "club album". John was into the funk and Freddie was uh...making the rounds. I certainly agree there's not too much "staying power" with this album. When they released Jazz, I knew the days of what they produced with the first four albums was over...it actually bummed me out. "A Kind Of Magic" is actually the best thing they did after 1976, IMO.
The best thing about this album, apart from Under Pressure, is it's iconic cover artwork 👌
The cover was inspired by the electronic game SIMON. The band members loved playing it.
Not "Put Out The Fire"
Unless I'm wrong, I think Andy Warhol did it
@@michaelwilson2340 I thought it was inspired by Let It Be
@@GrouRocks Check out 'Queen- The Ultimate Illustrated History Of The Crown Kings Of Rock' by Phil Sutcliffe. It explains the link between SIMON and the album cover.
Like you, I've always thought that 'When The Going Gets Tough...' (from 1985) rips off 'Las Palabras de Amor'. As does UB40's 'Red Red Wine' (with the keyboard riff) from the following year.
I'm surprised to learn that some Queen fans don't like 'Las Palabras...'; I've always thought of it as classic Queen.
I like it weakest tracks were the dreadful Body Language and the Roger Taylor tracks, but Back Track, Staying Power, Los Palabas, Put Out the Fire, Cool Cat and of course Under Pressure are all terrific. No doubt it was driven by Freddie and to a degree John.
I never bought this album, but I have heard the songs on TH-cam and radio. I've never cared for Freddie's overly sexualized songs and "Body Language" is a prime example; "Get Down, Make Love" is even worse, but that's from another album. "Put Out the Fire" is classic Queen and I can listen to "Las Palabras De Amor", "Back Chat" and "Staying Power". I'm not sure why, but "Under Pressure" isn't a favorite of mine; maybe like "One Vision", it sounds like it was 100% created extemporaneously in the studio. I've read that Hot Space and the video of "I Want to Break Free" tanked Queen's popularity in the USA, and there is truth to that, but in the 1980's Queen's demographic changed: the devoted fans that bought their first 3 albums (1973 to 1974), were now parents trying to raise young families and grow their careers, so purchasing music had to compete with paying rent, food, transportation, etc...
I absolutely adore hot space for me it's a fun album 🙂
Sparks' No. 1 in Heaven is a better example of a rock band going the disco route. I feel like if Queen had combined the multi layered vocals and guitar harmonies of their earlier work with the Moroder style synths and pulsating rhythms, they would have had a more successful disco album. It also would have helped if they did it a couple of years earlier.
Never was interested in
Hotspace. Much rather track down their 2nd album, which is REAL Queen.
Hot Space came out at such a weird time and to be in the middle of classic albums The Game and The Works just magnifies its flaws even more. Queen were coming off the huge successes of A Night At The Opera all the way up to The Game and continued to try and progress. But unfortunately Hot Space regressed too much. About half the album is good but for me it's not one of the Queen albums I go to. I think Calling All Girls, Action This Day and Under Pressure are stand out tracks for a discombobulated album. Plus the cover looks like the band was playing Twister and thought "why don't we make this the album cover." Well they went right back in the right direction with the powerhouse of The Works.
"A kind of calculated retreat," BOOM. Perfect. I've thought the same thing for decades about The Works, but that's the most succinctly I've ever heard it put.
I"ve never heard it..but my wife has it on vinyl.....now I'm going to have to listen to it.
I remember the 11 year old me hearing Hot Space for the first time and thinking, "Oh, this sounds a bit weird for Queen." I also remember the thirtysomething me firing up the album for the first time in an age and thinking, "Yeah, this really isn't all that great, is it?" By this point, I'd already discovered the formula for what makes a good album. It kind of goes like this:
- If the first three songs are hit singles, the album is mostly "meh"
- The later in the album the hit singles are, the better it is likely to be
- If the biggest (or only) hit is the last song on the album, the whole thing is trash
And that last one pretty much sums up Hot Space.
All that said, though, I'd still argue that this is only a bad album for Queen. When compared with albums in general, it's actually somewhere in the realms of okay. Granted, some of the songs are truly dreadful in any context, but there's more than enough on here to make it listenable. If you're sticking it on and expecting Queen then yes, disappointment is imminent, but as something to just throw on regardless of who it is, it's not that bad.
As bad Queen albums go, this isn't the worst. That honour goes to the Flash soundtrack. Some soundtrack albums can be phenomenal pieces of work and even Queen's own A Kind Of Magic is, for my money at least, a bit of a masterpiece. But Flash is a lazy, throwaway slab of vinyl that never fails to disappoint. The film itself is B movie cheese, managing to be fun and watchable in that "so bad it's good" vein, but the album retains none of that.
As for The Works, I view that album in the same vein as The Cure's Japanese Whispers. Both are akin to albums designed for those who didn't buy the singles (more so for The Cure's album), and both came on the back of an album that was hampered by the band being in a really bad place, with their preceding album Pornography not exactly receiving critical acclaim at the time. Both The Works and Japanese Whispers got the bands back on track, too, despite playing it relatively safe.
More than fair, and quite frankly, generous review of a truly abysmal album.
Hot Space is one of my favourite Queen albums and i have them all . It was so refreshing to hear them attempt more dance orientated music Body language reached number 11 in the Billboard Hot 100 25 in the UK , i thought it would have reached number 1 here.Cool cat is excellent too with a great guitar work . The Works which followed was much more standard Queen , but where they ever that standard anyway , there were always surprises . I enjoyed your review and the interview you did with Francis Rossi the other day . I remember the commotion in the Quo fan base when Marguerita time came out , such was the depature in style.
The Lennon tribute is great, underrated album, basically a Freddie solo album......even Queen's worst song is better than most critics could write, that's my problem with critics, just enjoy the music and being alive. Cool T shirt; cheer up mate........
I don't think I ever really got over the disappointment of the 1st play though. I was a lot younger then of course but never really went back. With the exception of Put Out the Fire - there was a lot of rewinding & playing of that one. Still love it. (Under Pressure being in a completely different league of its own.)
What I've found is the og's who were around for Queen, mostly detest 'Hot Space'. Whereas millennials and gen z's mostly think it's actually quite a quality album. And we're always right so 🤷🏻♂️😉😂
Successful style and genre changes can be done. Look at the 90s albums of U2. Actung Baby, Zooropa and Pop. All brilliant albums from a band well established for more traditional rock music.
I agree, well-said! For me the last Queen great album is The Game. Afterward they became caricatures of themselves.
I'd agree... until Made in Heaven which reintroduced the lyrical Queen.
Honestly, Hot Space is not as bad as I thought it would be when I first listened to it. I think Staying Power, Body Language and Calling All Girls are quite disappointing for Queen’s own standards. However, Life Is Real (Song For Lennon), Put Out The Fire, Las Palabras Del Amor and Cool Cat are at least enjoyable and ok songs. Under Pressure is obvs a classic. The second side is easier to listen to In my opinion.
I remember feeling, KNOWING, that one of my absolute favorite bands had take a turn…for the worst? I KNEW..I didn’t like the feel, and hated the look (video) of “Body Language “. It was not the Queen…I had loved as a kid. I was saddened more than anything when I heard these tunes. Time has been kinder to this record in my mind, as a few of the songs you CAN hear how great of songwriters they were even when not in sync. Calling All Girls, Las Palabras De Amor, Put Out The Fire, all solid. Back Chat, Cool Cat, Dancer….not as much.
Somebody, somewhere in the Queen camp (🤭) must have thought 'Body Language' was a good track as they had the audacity to release it as a single!!
Mercury and Deacon were the driving forces behind this album; May and Taylor weren't keen.
And then they became totally irrelevant in the USA IIRC. No tours and no radio play. Not until Wayne’s World revived them.
Any sex it gay talk immediately alienated you from the us..
"Put Out The Fire" was good and sounded like the Queen of old. "Las Perlabras De Amor" is my favorite and of course "Under Pressure" is a classic. But the rest of Hot Space ain't worth a fudge cycle!
A bad bike to ride, but tasty to eat
Personally I love Hot Space and the art work . As Freddie said at the time it’s just a bloody record
Unless I'm wrong, I think Andy Warhol did the cover
@@barryscott8041 Freddie designed the cover he loosely based it on Warhol artwork though
How about Calling all girls? It's catchy and kind of happy.
forgot about that one
@@classicalbum thanks! Dancer, put out the fire, and calling all girls.
I stopped buying or listening any Queen album after they released “Another one bites the dust”. I just could not cope with the “disco” direction shift. SonQueen for me finished with Jazz album.
It`s not my favorite Queen-album, but Cool Cat is one of my favorite Queen-songs!!!
What you didnt mention was although "disco stuff" had gone 1982 was the beginning of high compression recordings of which this album reflects.Even the likes of ACDC and more so ZZ Top took on board and of course Dire Straits most famously.It was all about crispness and highly compressed sound that won the battle at the time.You did it or you died at pop level and Queen were a pop outfit.
I Doubt I've listened to the entire album more than one time.
The last true glimpse of what the band Queen originally stood for...was in the song "The Hero". That was Queen's "last hoorah" as the band formally known as Queen....before the 80's got ahold of them and ripped them a "new" one
queen never found the subtle intricacies after jazz.dead on time never gets a mention..and taylors 1st solo album gets better with time..interlude in Constantinople is class..who needs a podcast to know what you know...
I do not like disco music, but somehow this album made something because of the voice of Freddy Mercury.
The problem with calling this album 'disco' is that it's really not disco. It's more of a white funk album... not like that helps it much. (If it had been disco, it might have at least been fun in retrospect). Under Pressure is a great closer, but that track was only tacked on as an afterthought once it had already been a hit standalone single the year before.
I still enjoy Put Out The Fire and the ballad Las Palabras De Amor, while most of the tracks that appeared live on the 1982 tour were far better than the albums versions. While Under Pressure was played until the final Queen tour in 1986, I believe only one song - Staying Power - was performed after the 1982 tour... for only a few dates on the Works tour in 1984.
Queen has always been my favorite band, and will remain so, but if I hear Body Language or Cool Cat ever again, I'll be forced to jam pencils in my ears!
The October and November 82 versions of Body Language are much more entertaining than the studio original, esp. Tokorozawa. My problem with this stuff isn’t that it's "gay club" music (though that is unappealing to me), it's that songs like that hit differently in a post-AIDS era. Freddie singing about and vaguely acting out the behavior that led to his death is very uncomfortable (and sad).
They were always a pastiche band; their bigger albums all had pastiches of other eras and styles ( which is a trope in pop/rock anyway) and it seems this one didn't work whereas the others did. Maybe the con was exposed.
Not being aware of the club scene or any of that stuff back then, I always thought this was an attempt to further the sound they had such great success with from "The Game". "Another One Bites the Dust" was a massive # 1 in the US, whereas a more traditional Queen single "Play the Game" didn't even crack the top 40 here. I've always looked at this album as having a few good songs, all on side 2, and a bunch of things that don't really do it for me, though some of the more dance oriented tunes are catchy. I do dislike "Cool Cat" greatly. Freddie's falsetto voice is like someone buggering a cat for me. That said, "Put Out the Fire" is a solid track. I love "Life Is Real" and who could not resist "Under Pressure", a song that I actually didn't care for too much when it came out but I like quite well now. The rest of it doesn't really work too well for me. Of course, it's all subjective. Good video.
It wasn't just Queen that were at it in the early '80s. Robert Palmer's 'Pride' comes to mind, even the marvellous John Martyn produced some horrid early synth-sequenced stuff around then, like on 'Well Kept Secret'
The eighties either broke up classic bands, or made them change drastically. Look at Yes, Genesis, Elp, heck even Bowie sucked in the eighties
@@deansusec8745 I was talking more about them having a misjudged bash at dance music really, but I take your point.
@@deansusec8745 he did until Tin Machine !
I can’t believe that one online critic counts “Hot Space” in the top five of their top 20 Queen albums, with “ Body language “ their favourite track. Erm!!! When the the band shun their own creation , that should be enough to tell you it’s F*#kin shite! I agree with your opinion of “Jazz”.
The band got so far up their own arse , they could see Zeppelin’s feet!
Gimme Queen2 any day!
I really like this album. However I also agree with pretty much everything you said. Very much "guilty pleasure" material.
To be perfectly honest, all of the albums after News of the World, with the possible exception of The Game, were highly dubious. (Just my opinion, of course.)
Try listening to it with a different track order…makes it sound much better IMO….1. Put out the fire. 2. Dancer. 3. Life is real. 4. Back chat. 5. Action this day. 6. Las palabras de amor. 7. Staying power 8. Calling all girls. 9. Body language. 10. Cool cat. 11. Under pressure.
IMO Queen can do no wrong , ooops they did here ,well at least 2/4 of the album with a couple of gems still able to surface through the weeds.
A Night at the Opera was the summit, preceded by three brilliant albums. But then it was a slow but steady decline until The Game, and then it was all over. After that, I stopped listening.
How did a span of just ten years go from The Prophet Song to…It’s a Kind of Magic? Awful. Tragic.
This album killed Queen's foothold in the US. And for all the things Queen did as good or better than anyone else - performing R&B was NOT one of them.
Personally this Record broke my heart. For me "Jazz" and "The Game" were slowly straying from the awesomeness of peak 70s Queen, they still had plenty of to offer that was uniquely "Queen". "Hot Space" was antithetical to all the things that made me love the band
That's an understatement.
This album MURDERED Queen's popularity here in America.
They had to do something different .Freddie"s voice is superb on it ..but so many great albums around then from Human League and Tears for fears
I cant handle anything on this album then beyond Put out the fire and las palapras de amor. I dont count under pressure.
Since early pressings did not had under pressure..
I actually quite like some of Hot Space. There are some good bits on it Back Chat, Put Out the Fire, Staying Power, Los Palabras, Cool Cat, Life Is Real are all pretty good and obviously Under Pressure.
Dancer, Calling All Girls, Body Language and Action this Day are all pretty poor though, ironically, the May/ Taylor contributions are the worst one of the reasons that don’t want to remember it perhaps? However that keyboard work did lead to things like Radio Ga Ga so can’t have been all bad. Body Language was a terrible lead single and I agree the video was even worse - Back Chat I think would have been a better choice, sadly Queens career in the USA never recovered from this. The next couple of albums whilst some great highs like Radio Ga Ga, Hard Life, Kind of Magic and Who wants to live forever? were patchy with dross like Man on the Prowl, Pain is So Close to Pleasure. Only with The Miracle and then Innuendo did Queen get back to consistent quality albums. However don’t forget even the mighty Game had some filler like Don’t Try Suicide and Coming Soon are pretty mediocre IMHV.