The Works

About

Queen had been together for nearly 15 years by the time <i>The Works</i> arrived in 1984, and whatever lingering impression the band members might’ve given as four young guys having fun was more or less gone. They’d taken about a year and a half off from each other—a huge amount of time, considering how quickly Queen had released albums in the 1970s—and all four had worked on non-Queen project. Before the release of <i>The Works</i>, it was only natural to wonder how much longer Queen would reign. (Fielding a question about whether the band was taking a break, or actually breaking up, Freddie Mercury said it’d be silly to start a new band at 40.) But <i>The Works</i> proved Queen hadn’t lost any of its creative or commercial momentum. The album is a compromise between the tight, synth-heavy sound of <i>Hot Space</i> and the grand classic rock that came before. The funk and R&B influences are pretty much gone on <i>The Works</i>, but electronics are more prevalent than ever—a decisive turn for a band that had printed “no synthesizers” on their album credits just a handful of years earlier. Yet while an artist like David Bowie had used electronics to alter his sound at a genetic level, Queen’s usage was mostly on the surface, whether it was the way the soft synth pads of “Radio Ga Ga” added a little space, or the way Fred Mandel’s rubbery solo on John Deacon’s “I Want to Break Free” captured, in sound, the physical sensation of something wriggling out of its chain. Yet there are still elements of traditional Queen to be found here. “Hammer to Fall” is the proud, simple rock song the band hadn’t written in year, while “It’s a Hard Life” is probably one of Mercury’s most underrated ballads—a perfect encapsulation of the sad-but-triumphant sound that Queen did so well. .

via Apple Music

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