Queen
The Works

THE REVIEW

Gentlemen, copy away.

"A night at the opera" had been a chimera, a mirage. A nice album by Queen, possible? And now, here they are, together again, once more fooling the many fans stupefied by too much noise and too much banality.
The most overrated band in music history (led by Monsieur Freddy Mercury, an idol? A modern clone of Jim Morrison?), releases this tedious "The Works", the umpteenth duplicate, the umpteenth disappointment. "The Works", meaning the work, meaning finished claptrap.

The leading single of the album says it all, "Radio Ga Ga". The inspiration for this much-praised pseudo-masterpiece apparently came from Roger Taylor's son who one day pronounced the infamous phrase "Radio ca ca ca". From this childish stuff, which would have been more suitable for the young audience of the Zecchino d'Oro, Queen fabricated a long song of almost six minutes, all based on the supposed amusement that the onomatopoeic 'Ga Ga' should bring to the audience. Is it possible? Is it possible that people are passionate about this rubbish? Possible? Possible!, since "The Works" crushed any previous sales record.
But yes, let's give the alibi of the catchy easy song, and then? What remains of this album? Little, nothing, absolutely nothing. Faded and cheap rock, "Tear it up", boring and repetitive, "I want to break free", became famous for the well-known video in which Queen, depicted in women's clothing (Mercury dressed as a hysterical housewife, to be honest, is quite amusing), attempt to recreate a sort of messed-up American family. In the end, however, not much more. And the rest is honestly musically uninteresting rubbish: "Machines", "It's a hard life" (the lyrics of the song, translated to Italian, are ridiculous and sappy: "È una battaglia lunga e dura, imparare a prendersi cura l'uno dell'altro, fidarsi fin dal primo momento, quando si è innamorati", you decide...).

A sprinkle of mild hard rock, "Hammer to fall", in which Queen discovers themselves as environmentalists and pacifists (the hammer is the atomic bomb), and the conscientious stir (as sterile as it is fake) of "Is this the world we created?" makes chickens laugh. The physical and animalistic side of man, "Man of the prowl", and the usual civic conscience in "Keep passing the open windows" in which, lo and behold, the issue of suicide is also discussed.

In short, many topics (even quite weighty topics), all however treated with extreme superficiality and too much musical arrogance. Sure, Mercury's voice isn't ungracious, it’s gritty, it’s passionate, fine, okay, but the music, the lyrics, the atmospheres, are often recycled stuff (or better, self-recycled), pretentious and coarse.