When you label an album as The Works it conjures up different ideas of what one can expect. Queen’s eleventh album has all the elements that any Queen album is known for, a pure rock sound, similar to their last two albums ‘The Game’ and ‘Hot Space’.

The band delivers their best shot on this album of 9 songs and you get what they call - the works.
The album begins with the Roger Taylor classic, Radio Ga Ga, a synthpop and stadium rock favourite, a worldwide smash, much of the texture in the song comes from its impending chorus and Mercury’s strong vocals. Mercury also contributed a vast amount to the arrangement and structure.

The was a super hit also when they performed it live during Queen at the Live Aid concert held at Wembley Stadium in July 1985 where 72,000 people treated it like a football chant with added hand clap and foot stomp. Radio Ga Ga was released as a single in January 1984, a month before the much anticipated new album.

From then on we have other material like Brian May’s Tear It Up; to Mercury’s It’s A Hard Life. The rocky Man on the Prowl, with its zippy Fender Stratocaster riffs and licks has some good moments and falls similar to Queen’s Crazy Little Thing Called Love. Machines’ (Or ‘Back To Humans)’ has a very Bowie styling about it, with Mercury’s bouncy vocals and Taylor’s voice, which is put through the Vocoder for added effect.

Flip over to Side B and there’s John Deacon’s masterpiece I Want To Break Free, a song most people probably imagine to have been written by Freddie, though it was likely penned with him in mind, that has an equally Mickey styled music video to it that featured the group in drag. The song was a huge hit with its break beats and guitar riffs.

Mercury’s Keep Passing the Windows, on which he plays the piano and synth, is complex and fits well on the album, while May’s Hammer to Fall is hard rock at its best from this British band. The final Is This The World We Created…?, written in response to TV coverage of the poverty and starvation in Africa, saw Brian and Freddie in writing tandem, probably set the ball rolling for what followed – a concert of Live Aid and Band Aid.

The album cover features the four band members seated in front of their shadows. The image shot in brown tinge is different from their usual color albums. The rear of the album cover has a machinery photo of mechanical grooves and portrait photos of the band members.

Rating: ****

Label: EMI

Year of release: 1983