The 20 Day Album challenge continues. Today’s pick is Queen’s Greatest Hits.
After Star Wars came out in 1977, and changed my life, sci-fi and fantasy movies became all the rage, capitalizing on the Star Wars success. One of these movies was 1980s Flash Gordon. One of the greatest things about that movie was the theme song. It was my introduction to Queen, and I was obsessed with that song. Not long after that, “Another One Bites the Dust” was released, and I became a Queen fan for life. At the time, the only songs I knew other than those two were “We Are the Champions” and “We Will Rock You“. Those songs alone were worth getting the Greatest Hits album. The first song on the first side was “Bohemian Rhapsody.” It was my first time hearing that song since the radio stations in the U.S. never played it. Within one second of hearing the song, “Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?”, I was blown away, and my music world was turned upside down! And then we get to the opera portion of the song, which was insane! And then Brian May’s guitar blowing off the roof! There didn’t need to be another song on there! But, man am I glad there was! I loved “Fat Bottomed Girls” and “Bicycle Race.” And I was once again blown away. This time it was by “Now I’m Here“. If you listen to the song on headphones, you hear Freddie sing “Now I’m here” in one headphone, then you hear him sing “Now I’m there” in the other headphone. You can do that?! Queen was now my favorite band. And move over Steve Perry (but not too far over), Freddie was, and still is, my all-time favorite singer. And this was the first full album that started it all for me.
Here is the album on Spotify:
And if you’d like to get the album from Amazon, you can click on the album cover below:
Return to the 80s 