Hot Space - a little gem

Listened to Hot Space today,in its entirety and after attempting to suppress any previous conceptions and controversies about the album how does it stand up today?
While I've never been one of the 'we hate Hot Space ' brigade , listening to it now and without judging any individual track, hollistically, I think it's a little gem.
Once we can accept the fact that Queen had dared to dip their toe into the funk / disco pool it's Queen in fine form.....if you don't judge it along side SHA for example!
It was Queen, once again, trying to change direction and not stand still.
So QZ 'ers, without being over zealous and perhaps with a light hearted standpoint, how do you think the album,as a whole, bears up nowadays, briefly, without a detailed,rambling critique!

I still think it is a neat summary of all the bad taste that dominated the early '80s. If you want to consider that a good thing, fine. I personally don't. The only good thing I can say about Hot Space is that it was a new, different sound from Queen's earlier records.

I think it still suck really. Live it was way better! Too bad we hadn't the live quality on the album record. Some songs are good. Freddie sings amazingly on the entire record!

I like Hot Space, and I'm glad they did it. We're in different moods - from day to day - it's a more easy listen than the early stuff, more fun. Cool Cat is great in the summer time.

1] they certainly weren't trail-blazers with the funk/disco thing - it was already well established long before 1982
2] they weren't even rock pioneers in this field - many established rock acts had ventured here 6 years (or more) prior to queen
- Purple, Zep, ELO, Eagles, Doobies, Bowie, ...even f**king Kiss did it!!!
3] the "sound" on the album was terrible
4] the songs brought nothing new to music - just a "slightly unfamiliar" queen sound

in light of the above there is only really two questions
re: 1&2 - queen used to lead, but now they were following, so if you'e going to change things and it's not something new, then why bother at all?
re: 3&4 - if you're going to produce something that sounds so muddy, plastic and messy...then why bother?

Good points, but it's nice to have Freddies voice over something different (than the traditional rock-sound).

...........I think k the enormous success of 'another one bites the dust', especially stateside, led them down the HS road, opened new doors for them, gave them a left of field direction perhaps?

I love it too - vastly underrated.

There's some absolutely awesome guitar work from Brian on there (when given the opportunity) and LIVE, as shown by the power and energy generated on the Milton Keynes release, the songs were really enervated with John & Roger coalescing beautifully behind all the noise.

Would love to see this out there as a proper Deluxe Edition with all the extended versions and the alternate mixes / out-takes included as a little archive of its own.

Hi there,

I remember when the LP came out and I played the first side, I kept on playing the first side a few times. I loved it. Now (and back then I suppose) I see that the bass/syth-driven grooves were very much of the time, it suited where I was at then and I grooved away happily.

Side B gave us more of some of the usual Queen elements, just thinned out.. What I still like about the album is the loose feel of some of the backing vocals (Dancer, Las Palabras), the cymbal sounds and percussion in Dancer, the mix of funk and screaming guitar in Back Chat and the great chords and bass line of Cool Cat and the mad horn parts of Staying Power. Now I know that much of this doesn't suit everyone, but in many ways this fact of musical variety has allowed Queen to appeal to a broad range of tastes over their career. So, 34 years later, it still makes me smile; great music to clean the house with!

well apart from the muddiness, and the fakersizers and the shit production the one other thing that killed it for me was simple:

laziness.
The Game was the experimental sound and it worked - because THEY made more than a "half-a-job-bob" effort with it

HS was lazy songs, lazy writing and minimal effort - hence - "let's synth everything"

The whole 'Queen dared to do something different' excuse is overused and nonsense IMO. Artistically speaking, 'The Game' and any of their 70's albums were far more daring, far more 'experimental' and way more groundbreaking. The difference is they did it far better on those records.

I agree with the laziness point. Abusing arpeggiators, synth-bass and drum-machines is expected from an amateur thirteen-year-old who's just got a new toy to play around with, not from professional musicians who half a decade earlier had been coming up with the likes of 'Millionaire Waltz' (where all four are magnificent on their respective instruments), 'Long Away' (those harmonies - wow!), 'You and I' and 'Drowse'.

Apologists can moan all they want but the fact of the matter is it's lacklustre and bland, with some exceptions ... but even those exceptions would've been the low point of any 70's album or 'The Game'.

Having said that, I still prefer it over 'The Works' and 'A Kind of Magic'. As for 'The Miracle', it's a bit of a toss-up, if only because 'The Miracle' has, in my opinion, Brian's best guitar work ever.

Just singling out one for song (for no particular reason), I still feel Staying Power is underrated.

So [b]there[/b].

Good topic.

Having recently revisted Hot Space myself, I can't really agree that it's a decent album. There are just too many bad songs on it. Dancer and Calling All Girls are just plain awful.

Cool Cat and Under Pressure are good tracks in their own right I think, and I like Life Is Real and even Las Palabras... but even these, with the exception of Under Pressure, were of a lesser quality than one would have expected from Queen - a band which was on the decline anyway.

Overall I think their 'experimentation' with this genre of music was a bit of a disaster, especially in the context of how much better their previous work had been. Most of their previous work was an experimentation in itself, and resulted in output of a far greater quality.

I think you have to view Hot Space in the context of what was going on at the time with teh band and other music in the UK
It was a shock at the time coming from them, but it fitted with the current mood of what was in the charts so I understand why it was thought a sensible route to take.
To be constantly creative to the level they were in the early 70's is pretty hard going, name any band that had a ten year run at that point and had all sold gold albums?

Looking back I like bits of it, I'm glad they did it so because it lead to other things, like most I suspect HS, The Game and The Works kinda came and went and I didnt really start to get back the vibe until Magic
the Game and Works both had some interesting songs but that period was always hampered by the way they chose to record, I prefer Queen live and loud and not so much put in a box and processed to hell
But at the time it was what was happening so... plus 4 creative people will never want to do the same thing for 10 years...

I think the album suffers from a poor production. Of course the songs in it haven't the composition level of the 70s albums, but they are catchy tunes. It would be much better with a much tasty production in terms of sound. Soundwise, it didn't age very well.
Anyway, I don't think the other Queen 80´s albums are much better. In my point of view, that decade was horrible musically and visually (films, tv shows, fashion in general). Queen couldn't escape to that. But other great acts from the 60s or 70s were much worse than Queen: Rolling Stones, the Zeppelin and Who reunions for Live Aid, Bowie, etc etc. At least, Queen continued to release great songs (not albums) once in a while: It's A Hard Life, Hammer To Fall, Princes Of The Universe, etc.