Classic Queen (1992)
1. A Kind of Magic
2. Bohemian Rhapsody
3. Under Pressure
4. Hammer to Fall
5. Stone Cold Crazy
6. One Year of Love
7. Radio Ga Ga
8. I'm Going Slightly Mad
9. I Want it All
10.Tie Your Mother Down
11.The Miracle
12.These Are the Days of Our Lives
13.One Vision
14.Keep Yourself Alive
15.Headlong
16.Who Wants to Live Forever
17.The Show Must Go On
It’s very easy — maybe too easy — to get completely turned around when artists start releasing and re-releasing their greatest hits under different names, covers, and formats. Even as someone who tries to stay ahead of that kind of thing, I have to admit that when it comes to Queen, I’m officially lost.
A big part of the confusion comes from the strange divide between Queen’s popularity in the U.K. and their unexpected downturn in the U.S. around 1982. For whatever reason, their American presence started to wane, even as they remained massive just about everywhere else. So what we ended up with were multiple “greatest hits” compilations — some released in the U.K., others in the U.S., and many not released on both sides of the ocean until years later.
The original Greatest Hits album that came out around 1981 was about as solid a collection as you could hope for. But for reasons still unclear — label changes, rights issues, who knows — that release eventually went out of print in the U.S. Not long after Mercury’s death, a Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 surfaced overseas, but again, it wasn’t available stateside until many years down the road. So unless you were a collector or importing CDs from across the pond, you were out of luck.
That’s where Classic Queen comes in. Released in 1992, this one was supposed to help patch the gap — and in a way, it does. But instead of continuing from where the original (now out of print) Greatest Hits left off, this compilation takes a bit of a strange angle. Of the 17 songs included, only five are from before 1982, and three of those were already on the original hits package. So this ends up playing more like a U.S.-friendly version of Volume 2, even though it’s not billed that way.
The good news is that most of what’s here is excellent. This is Queen in their later years, and the highlights from their final four studio albums are well represented. Tracks like Radio Ga Ga, I Want It All, These Are the Days of Our Lives, and The Show Must Go On show that the band was still delivering right up to the end. And if you stopped paying attention to Queen after The Game, this collection will feel surprisingly fresh.
A few months after this release, a revised Greatest Hits was put out in the U.S. that resembled the original 1981 version. Pair that one with Classic Queen and you’ll pretty much have everything you need if you’re just looking for the essentials. Still a bit of a strange way to go about it — but it worked quite well.
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