Was the group Queen a commercial band?

What do you think?

In my opinion, the band Queen was very commercial band! I do not mean absolutely nothing bad - usually in such bands play excellent musicians and we all know that the quartet was such a band!
Band Queen has never been a political band or a band that should criticized social conditions, except perhaps at the beginning of his career but it was also in the spirit of commerciality.
I think the first album, which is purely commercial is News of the World and then it does not stop anymore. The following albums by quality only fall but they all have hits, which saves a group, I think they are well aware of this!
I do not think that the music was bad, but it could be better! Live performances between 82 and 85 are (except Live Aid) in my opinion worse than they could be. Last tour was good full with energetic music.
I'm a big fan of the group, but I tries to look thinks as they were in reality! The group was certainly brave, because putting so many styles in rock music, but a little too commercial anyway.
For me they are still the best rock band of all time, despite the fact that the albums The Works, The Game and Hot Space in my opinion are bad, no stories, as for example, the first five albums.
The big question is of course whether we will live to see live album from the seventies, the thing is simply not enough commercial.

I apologize if I was too long!

Greetings Gregor!

I must be the only one who likes The Works (obviously), but i agree that it isnt Queens best work.

No, they were not a commercial band. That's why they didn't sell records, we never heard about them and this forum was never created.

Of course they were a commercial band and like I said this is not a bad thing. I just wanted to point out that in the eighties albums were not so good than before. Things were more superficial. Otherwise, I expect sarcasm.
And one more thing, this is my best band, but I try to go without idealization. One that is not commercial is not known, but how can commercialization affect the quality of music? In my opinion, too much commercialization cause lower quality!

Queen were very smart. They knew that music is art and business. They always had the guts to put any kind of experimentation they wanted in their songs, but they also knew that if they wanted to be entitled to do so, they needed hits. Otherwise their albuns and singles would flop and they would be out of the business; But even when they did "pop rubish" they did with style (most of the times at least).

Yes they were commercial but value for money too and that's not so bad.

The alleged declining quality of their products in the 80's was a complex matter and IMO it's not as related to being commercial as it'd seem at first.

I think most (not all, most) composers peak at some point and then it goes downhill... some may recover from it and go up again but then it goes down again, it's just life. For a band like Queen songwriting was as crucial as it could be. Body Language has an extraorindary work on the lead vocal, excellent harmonies, excellent quality on production and instrumentation ... but the song is crap so in terms of delivering a quality product you're just wasting your time; the demo version of Keep Yourself Alive is a far better product (IMO) despite the not-as-strong vocals and the relatively low sound quality (compared to HS), because it's a far better song in terms of musicality.

Freddie and John went from composing Somebody to Love and You and I in 1976 (separately) to composing Cool Cat in 1981 (together). In just five years they'd declined a lot. Brian too (compare Teo Torriatte with Dancer or Las Palabras de Amor) and Roger too (Drowse vs Action). That, and not the commercial aspect, was the key to the sub-par quality of some of their 80's material, IMO.

Commercial, all band is, at least queen made ??great albums noncommercial and had good moments in commercial albums.

Seb - great posts.

Indeed, all artists have creative peaks and lulls. There aren't too many artists whose scales tip toward peaks. Guys like Eno and Zappa come to mind. George Carlin too. In a span of 45 years there may have been a combined ten years of dry spells compared to ten brilliant HBO specials that each took 2-3 years on the road to perfect.

On the other hand - imagine being the in-house engineer for Paul McCartney in the mid-80s after he asked if you liked his latest ballad.

Macca's virtually the poster child for 'talent runs out' ... well, YMMV there, but as much as I like Jenny Wren, Band on the Run or even Freedom, I think Penny Lane, Eleanor Rigby, All My Loving, Hey Jude and many others are far superior.

Queen's goal from the beginning was to become a fully professional group. They didn't just want to play in local concerts or unknown gigs, so obviously selling records was their priority, but this doesn't mean that they were willing to sacrifice their personal music tastes to be accepted by the public. Like almost every big music group they were trying to equilibrate between music and business -and they made it I believe!!!
“And, we have no such thing as a budget anymore. Our manager freaks when we show him the bill. We’re lavish to the bone, but all our money goes back into the product.” Freddie Mercury
www.FreddieMercuryKingdom.com

'Yes, we have a budget, and we need permission from our manager to buy anything' wouldn't exactly be popular amongst the fans.

yes for persil soap

In the early days they were a hybrid of bands overly obsessed with commercial success and artists who scoffed (or at least pretended to) their noses at trends. They stuck to their guns early on but were commercially successful with it. Later on they became far more mainstream, probably when it stopped being new to them and settled into a very commercially-friendly groove.