A DAY AT THE RACES

Queen has now reached stardom. So, how the hell can they cope with this? By releasing a better album than A Night? Or using the same recipe and presume that it will be received as well as its glorious predecessor.

The latter option is of course more comfortable. No risk.

Same great and wild opening song as Death On Two Legs with Tie Your Mother Down. A beautiful and melodic sweet song like Love Of My Live with You Take My Breath Away. So far, so good. But a bit of repeated work, right?

A Night At The Opera is not my fave album of the band. Too many average to even poor songs were stretched along the album and prevent it to be a masterpiece IMHHO. The history is repeating here as well with Long Away. Even if it is a May song, it is the weakest one of this album (on par with the closing Teo Torriatte.

On the contrary, The Millionaire Waltz (Mercury, of course) is brilliant. Varied, fresh, unpredictable, gorgeous, melodic, rocking, theatrical. Ever heard of this before? Yes, it has more Bohemian flavour as some other song featured on this album. My fave here. By several miles...

And amazingly, You And I is another powerful pop track. A usual combination of great piano and sumptuous vocals; but who would doubt about this genuine Queen quality? My fave Deacon composition ever.

Somebody To Love is of course another highlight of this album. Reminiscent of the fabulous Bohemian Rhapsody. Fabulous vocals and great choir work (based on the 10CC technique used in the extraordinary I'm Not In Love). The problem being that this song tries to compete with these two gigantic pieces of music and is just shy of them of course.

The band is distilling some good hard-rock song with White Man. May is again rather convincing as a guitar player but even more as a song writer. It will appeal to any hard-rocking oldies as I am.

The difference between A Night At The Opera and A Day At The Races is the following IMHHO : the former holds two magical numbers (The Prophets Song and Rhapsody) but several useless short tunes. This one doesn't hold any of these two, but on the other hand it is more consistent. No such masquerade as Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon or Seaside Rendez-Vous. Even if Drowse is the poorest Taylor song so far.

This is anothe strong Queen effort. Four stars, but don't expect any prog in here. Maybe for their next album?

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