Man On The Prowl is underrated

[QUOTE] [b]tomchristie22 wrote:[/b]
The thing is, people are displaying favourtism towards the track just because it's very obscure.[/QUOTE]

MOTP is not very obscure. Non-album B-sides are obscure; unreleased tracks are obscure; album tracks are not.

[QUOTE] [b]tomchristie22 wrote:[/b]To say Man On The Prowl is a better song than Radio Ga Ga or Magic is completely absurd[/QUOTE]

No, it's not, because for some people (be it one, two, a hundred, a million or whichever figure you choose) it is, me included.

[QUOTE] [b]tomchristie22 wrote:[/b]people completely disregard the quality of some of their songs just because they're popular.[/QUOTE]

Best Friend is popular and is also a great song; Bo Rhap is popular and is a masterpiece; Killer Queen, Don't Stop Me Now, The Show Must Go On, Who Wants to Live Forever ... they're all great tracks that deserve to be as popular as they are, if not more.

Ga Ga and Magic belong to a different group IMO, along with Body Language and Another One Bites the Dust.

Yes I agree that those songs do belong to a different group. A much more commercial group. Its hard to pin down why, but they do. Having said that, they are the pinnacle of that sort of song, just some people don't like that sort of song. I do, but I like those earlier singles mentioned more. I also prefer later Queen songs like Innuendo, These Are The Days of our Lives and Mother Love. While they are very professional too, they aren't quite as commercial as that early 80's stuff and benefits from that in my opinion.

I think the real question is would have made a better single than Thank God It's Christmas?

http://www.45cat.com/record/queen5uk

Bollocks. Nice Fred Mandel piano though..

[QUOTE] [b]tomchristie22 wrote:[/b]
Similarly, I know people (some here) who literally believe Bo Rhap is one of their worst songs, most likely because it's one of their most widely appreciated.[/QUOTE]
There are people that don't like Bo Rhap and actually consider themselves Queen fans? Oh geez.

I personally like Radio Ga-Ga quite a lot, but can't really get into A Kind of Magic.

[QUOTE] [b]dysan wrote:[/b]
I think it suffers an unfair fate due to it's positioning on the album and lets face it, the works suffers 2 big problems - track order and the fact that superior versions of a couple of the songs exist on GH2.
[/QUOTE]
Wait...I Want to Break Free and what else? Hammer to Fall? How is the single version of that better than the album version?

Cheesier solo dude.

Might be a 12" single Dysan is referring to, although he does say the Greatest Hits album. Would need to check each song in detail and compare to be sure.
PS Waunakonor, check ther Personal page for a question I asked you. :-)

No, I refer to GH2. Amateurs.

Lol. OK, I've learned something. I knew about the Headbanger's version of Hammer to Fall, which runs about 5:08, as I bought a copy of it back in the day on 12 inch. But I hadn't picked up that there was a difference between the single version that runs around 3:55 and the album version that runs around 4:25.

I don't think it's under rated. I feel like it's a song where the band were thinking - wow people didn't really like Hot Space - let's do an album with stuff we know people do like. Crazy Little Thing Called Love was really popular - let's do a song exactly like that - except of course Fred didn't know any more guitar chords (or was it his guitar) so he wrote it on the piano. It's possible to see the same kind of thinking behind It's A Hard Life - let's do a song a bit like Play The Game and then put some opera in there too - people like it when we do that. Also we used to do gentle acoustic-style ballads - let's do another one! (you know which one I mean) Eventually Brian had to remind everyone that they're in a rock band so we get Hammer To Fall. Yeah I'm being a bit sarcastic but The Works could've been called By The Numbers. I would like to point out here I've bought The Works at least three times and I do actually quite like it.

I like the solo in the album version better than the one in the single (GH2) version, and I absolutely love the "Headbangers' Version," but I guess that's just my opinion.

Man On The Prowl. Limited ambition in my view. As a rockabilly song, it ticks all the boxes, but rockabilly is a lazy, boring, repetitive style of music and for Queen to be releasing this when they had the talent to produce brilliance like It's Late, Millionaires Waltz, White Queen etc is nothing short of criminal.

Yeah, but they left that back in the mid 70s when they had ambition still. The Works is a bloody lazy album, as much as I love it.

Agreed about the Headbangers version - kind of my point about the superior versions not being on the album - a real shame. That said, if you compile all the 12" versions of the whole album together in order with all the repeating and looping you will end up punching someone :o)

Good thread.

The works is a four track greatest hits album with a bunch of filler. Yes it wasn't written and recorded as such, but that is what it became.

The four singles are great on their own, but as an album it's the worst the band made.

As for Man on the Prowl, I don't think it would have sold in the way CLTCL did, had it been released as a single.

^^^^
agree comepltely with this comment
except for the worst album...not quite
HS, then magic, then works