Queen – A Night at the Opera Review

Think anything more of Queen than occasionally listenable, overplayed rock, and you’ll struggle to make friends in the real world. Pull your head from the sand and look around. Queen being cool died off around the release of Bohemian Rhapsody, three decades after they should have been retired from popular culture. But the mass appeal is what guides the world, independent thought is never going to crack through the mush and ridiculous noise the Freddie Mercury-fronted group makes. Hollow but impressive instrumental excess and a vocal range which never offered lyrics of real sincerity or depth beyond the hokey stomp clap stress test of We Will Rock You or the repetitive self-aggrandization of News of the World. Still, hold firm when listening to their alleged, must-listen album. No, not Sheer Heart Attack but A Night at the Opera, an album which gets a free pass from most listeners because the pub disco still has it on rotation. Why change what people know they love? Would A Night at the Opera be as miserable a listen without its notoriety? Yes.  

Two tracks on here are worth talking about and the rest is filler. Don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise. You’re My Best Friend is the best track on the album. No, this is not an oversight of Bohemian Rhapsody, a frankly overblown but admittedly anthemic piece of work which feels more like two songs stitched together by a transitional bit of showy fret work from Brian May than anything else. Death on Two Legs is a solid opener, nothing to blow you away or break the speakers in your home, not unless you wish to take a hammer to them before Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon and I’m in Love With My Car burst through with all the want of sick blowing out the wrong side of a bag. They are masterclasses in comparison to what follows. ‘39 and Sweet Lady are lacklustre efforts but then they too are award-worthy when paired with the frankly miserable double bill of Seaside Rendezvous and The Prophet’s Song.  

What Queen manages here, so successfully and embarrassingly, is a continuous succession of worse songs. They are barely interested in the rock band style, the operatic flow, none of it feels like it’s quite in focus for the band. Even Mercury sounds out of step with the instrumentals on the pig-headed putdown, Death on Two Legs. Playful trips through London town are light enough for A Night at the Opera with Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon but they’re trying and failing to bring about this stream of consciousness. Musically, it’s vaguely interesting. Once you’ve heard one Queen instrumental you truly have heard them all. All the sparkle of impressive material but not the depth. Crowd pleasers and karaoke fodder, that’s for sure, and the impact of that cannot be understated.  

Production effectiveness is crucial here. There’s a real creativity burning in the studio but it never manages to make its way into the songs or material itself. Interesting ideas which are tremendously underwhelming in practice, be it the lengthy Yes-like ballad of The Prophet’s Song or the tacky Bohemian Rhapsody. Queen were always a singles band but even the singles here are falling well short of what they should offer the rock and roll genre. Innovators? On a technicality. Popular? Because listeners never know what they really want, they just know they want familiarity. Queen offered plenty of that and managed to adapt with the pop shifts of the times better than most did, it’s what kept them relevant rather than decent material or interesting angles on their work. A Night at the Opera finds the band overwhelmed by obviously influential in-studio work, but dazzled by some very lacklustre songs.