Happiness ? The best solo effort ?

I am surely not alone when considering Roger Taylor's 'Happiness?' to be the best Queen solo outing.

The album is filled with haunting piano, soaring blues slide guitar, soulful vocals and beautiful melodies. The excellent title track, The key, Revelations and Foreign sand would have all graced any Queen album. While more experimental numbers such as Freedom train and Nazi's 1994 give the album that peculiar 'Roger' flavour (a little wacky but very rock and roll).

On a personal note it was my soundtrack to a year I spent in Japan in the 90's so it's quite a personal choice. I shut my eyes and I'm back there everytime I hear it.

I.

It's definitely Roger's best, I'm not sure if it's the best of all solo albums though. I still rank Barcelona the highest, as I don't think any other rock singer has ever done something like that, and Back To The Light is at least as good as Happiness?, if not better. But Foreign Sand is the best solo song of all members of Queen.

For me it's

1 Barcelona
2 Happiness
3 Blue Rock

sorry Brian...

starfleet does it for me.

For me, I think [b]Mr. Bad Guy[/b] is the best solo album, simply because I enjoy every song on the album. [b]Barcelona[/b] has some good songs, and it's a magnificent album, but I don't like every song. I don't like everything on [b]Happiness?[/b]... Some of the songs are great, but it's not my favorite solo album. I like Brian's [b]Back To The Light[/b] album... but as I said, Freddie's first solo album is the best. Roger's early albums were great, too. I like catchy songs.

Sorry guys - "Barcelona"! It has never been reached in artistry even more then a decade later!
Number two goes "Happiness?" - I agree!

My top ten for what its worth !!

1: How can i go on (Freddie)
2: Too much love will kill you (Brian original solo version)
3: heaven for everyone (cross version with Roger on Vocal)
4: Old Friends ( Roger)
5: Surrender (Roger)
6: Another world ( Brian)
7: Starfleet (Brian)
8: Dream of Thee (Brian)
9: There must be more to life than this (Freddie)
10: Love Kills (Freddie)

For me the best is Another World by Brian, I absolutly love it, followed by Mr Bad Guy


I actually barely listen to rogers solo albums, I don't like what he does that much!

Let's be honest with ourselves - ALL of the Queen solo albums are crap - without exception!

I think Happiness has the consistency of a Queen album. As being discussed on another thread just now, there are some cracking songs (Foreign Sand is incredible, Old Friends is a great end to the album), but also a bit of filler. But that's the same with all Queen related albums.
I really like the first side of Strange Frontier, and a lot of Electric Fire. So I'd rate Roger's stuff quite highly.

Brian's was a little less consistent. Starfleet is an interesting document of essentially five talented musicians jamming, and I do like listening to this on the odd occasion. BTTL was a very good solid album, but Another world was a bit of a mixture - what's the word? - a mish mash! - yes, that's the word I was looking for. It didn't seem to flow very well as an album, and didn't have too many highlights. I think some tracks (On My Way Up, for example) ended up more fun live than they were on the album. Furia should have been a single or EP rather than a full soundtrack album!

Freddie's stuff is exactly what one would have expected from him. Expressing the two extremes of his musical tastes - Mr Bad Guy is so 80's pop it's now rather dated - and Barcelona is such a beautifully sculpted piece. My problem with Barcelona is Montserrat - she fits wonderfully onto the title track and Ensueño, but she seems out of place on every other track. It would have worked better to have other female vocalists on The Fallen Priest and The Golden Boy, and to do the other tracks as pure solo. It could also do with losing Overture Piccante and gaining another couple of 'proper' tracks! I keep meaning to take the various demo versions and see if I can come up with a more preferred version of this album!

Agree completely about Barcelona. Never understood why 'Exercises in free love' was not included.

For me the top 5 studio albums are:

1. Barcelona
2. Back to the Light
3. Blue Rock
4. Another World
5. Electric Fireh

"happiness?" is too disjointed for my taste. It sounds like an album of demos (bar a couple of songs). It sounds like it was rushed.

V.

Barcelona and Back to the light top Happiness IMO.

1. Back to the Light
2. Barcelona
3. Fun in Space

I have the same feeling about Happiness. I think it is a great album but some songs sound incomplete to me. For example 'everybody hurts sometime' and 'you had to be there' sound very poor to me.

i'd probably say Electric Fire but i do have soft spots for Fun In Space and Strange Frontier,it depends what mood i'm in...