Hot Space by Queen
Hot Space is the tenth studio album by British rock band Queen, released in May 1982. Marking a notable shift in direction from their earlier work, the band employed many elements of disco, pop music, R&B and dance music on the album, being partially influenced by the success of their 1980 hit "Another One Bites the Dust". This made the album less popular with fans who preferred the traditional rock style they had come to associate with the band. Queen's decision to record a dance-oriented album germinated with the massive success in the US of "Another One Bites the Dust" (and to a lesser extent, the UK success of the song too). The album's second single, "Body Language", did peak at #11 on the US charts. "Under Pressure", Queen's collaboration with David Bowie, was released in 1981 and became the band's second #1 hit in the UK. The song was a separate project and recorded ahead of the album, before the controversy over Queen's new sound (disco-influenced rock music). In July 2004, Q magazine listed Hot Space as one of the top fifteen albums where great rock acts lost the plot. Most of the album was recorded in Munich during the most turbulent period in the band's history, and Roger Taylor and Brian May lamented the new sound, with both being very critical of the influence Mercury's manager Paul Prenter had on the singer. Estimated sales of the album currently stand at five million copies.
At first you might feel thrown by the drum machines and dance grooves on Queen’s <i>Hot Space</i>—not to mention the relative lack of guitar. Fair enough: The album marks a cosmetic shift from <i>A Night at the Opera</i>, or even from the underestimated <i>Jazz</i>. But settle in and you’ll find that the essential elements that make Queen so, well, <i>Queen</i>-like are all over <i>Hot Space</i>. It’s big, it’s triumphant, it’s flamboyant and it’s coming to getcha through a haze of sequins on a strong white horse. Released in 1982, <i>Hot Space</i> captures the stylish decadence of the early 1980s, with its dry ice and neon tights (a vibe conjured up by “Staying Power”). And Freddie Mercury’s sexuality and embrace of gay club culture had never sounded more confident than it did on tracks like “Back Chat” and “Body Language”. In a way, you could say that the album’s relative minimalism had more to do with rock ’n’ roll than the mini-operas Queen had slaved over so ambitiously in the years before. Of course, the highlight of <i>Hot Space</i> is the David Bowie collaboration “Under Pressure”, a light, funky, weirdly patched-together song that captured the naive optimism of its cultural moment better than anything found on the FM dial (that is, until “We Are the World” came along a few years later). Here are four minutes that could make a wall cry: As outsized and corny as the lyrics got—"Why can’t we give love one more chance?!”—the song’s real driver was John Deacon’s bassline, which in two notes captured both the clocklike rigidity of the Information Age (Personal computers! Globalisation! The deregulated bustle of Wall Street!), as well as the human perseverance that made it bearable. (As for that bassline’s origins: Roger Taylor said Deacon had forgotten the part when the band went to get a pizza; Taylor, in his telling, remembered it.) Like it or not, <i>Hot Space</i> did what fame and money couldn’t accomplish: It got Queen out of a rut.
