Did queen hurt their legacy?

i got intersted in queen listening albums like greatest hits 2 or the works
those were my first albums
then i got into older stuff like queen & queen II
and it took me a while to like them, but now my favourite songs are the propeth song or something like that
not kind of magic ( not to say that song is bad )
so it´s not all that bad
now i like all the stuff, depends on the mood

i think only clueless people can label queen like the band who just sang radio ga ga, or itbf
they just evolved, got influenced, prehaps became more mature
not to say that they evolved to better thing, but just different
queen´s diversity is one of the thing that makes them so big
you have the range from liar, proppets song, bo rap, to you take my breath away, love of my life, white queen, and than another one bites the dust, radio ga ga and i could go on and on
in my mind there is no band like them
and they were bloody good

Rush is a great band. Geddy Lee started singing in a lower octave as of 1980's Permanent Waves. Also, the stopped the 10 minute epics after Moving Pictures.

i think there is a strong argument that Freddies music changed as his sexuality became aware to himself.so we got alot of euro-disco in our queen.that being said,they sold a ton of records,just less here in USA where middle america seems to think peoples sexuality is anyones fucking business

no, they didn't hurt the legacy imho...but yes after The Game the level of work was inconsistent. One truly great single, Under Pressure, then some really good singles like Radio GaGa, Hammer to Fall, One Vision, and I Want it All, but the only truly great, earth-shaking whole album after 1980 imho was Innuendo. (Flash Gordon was a really bold experiment, and I do like the album more than HS, but FG is in another category I think.) MIH has a few bright spots-- A Winter's Tale, Mother Love, You Don't Fool Me, It's a Beautiful Day reprise, and the infamous track 13. Some of the b-sides and alternate versions (I Go Crazy, A Dozen Red Roses for My Darling, and credits outro version of A Kind of Magic) seem stronger than 'official' versions...but for the fan who looks for this stuff, it's a reward, not something that 'hurts' the legacy. GHIII didn't hurt it either imho-- what we really need is a decent box set.

I personally think it adds to the queen legacy, If queen were like ac/dc with the same sounds album after album I wouldn't be the queen fan i am, but the general rock public can't stand 80's queen. This is a queen website, and these albums even get bashed here.

Did queen hurt their legacy?
In my opinion NO!

i'd actually say that THE EIGHTIES hurt most artists' legacy! ;)

i'd say TW, AKOM and TM are Queen's worst albums.

i frankly love HS, it is fresh, original, fun, and contains amazing vocals.

i'm glad the band finished its career with 2 sensational albums, Innuendo and MIH.

some like to blame freddie and john for queens weaker era, i disagree, brians songwriting took a nose dive in the eighties. dancer, tear it up and machines (with talyor) is an example of this. 70's queen is brilliant, though 80's queen is not nearly so brilliant, I still find it an enjoyable listen.

[QUOTE][QUOTENAME]BHM 0271 wrote: [/QUOTENAME]Excellent topic, and good posts here. Did they hurt their legacy with the 80s albums? Don't think so. None of the 70s groups had particularly strong stuff in the 80s, save Pink Floyd with The Wall, and they didn't fare well after that. [/QUOTE]
It was 1979...

I really liked your posts BTW :)
Someone pointed out that already on SHA they had "Leroy Brown" and "Brighton Rock". Sure- completely different styles, aren't they? Yet IT FITS! Take ANATO - I can't imagine any other song following Death On Two Legs than Lazing... Two worlds apart- and it just simply FITS, it's so well CRAFTED! It wasn't just "let's put as many styles as we can think of"- it was all pretty god damn well CRAFTED. In the 80s though... The albums aren't ALBUMS- just bunches of songs put together on one LP. There's nothing crafted on AKOM- if you put a "shuffle" on your CD- well, it won't matter (save the end to WORKS album). Seriously- what about MIRACLE- what a crappy songs order!!!
IMO in 70s those different styles sparkled- that was the sign of them being absolutely brilliant and imaginative. They had millions of ideas- and what was most important- each style was being adopted to a QUEEN sound. Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon- you got that brilliant guitar solo, you can't take it for anything else- it's Queen. Millionaire Waltz- isn't it typically Queenish waltz? Leroy Brown- doesn't guitar straight away tell you it's Queen? And so on and so on- yes, in 70s they tried almost every style possible- yet it was coherent, it was within their own unique style or sound or whatever you want to call it.
In 80s... Well- take Hot Space. Songs aren't bad. If they recorded them keeping the Queen sound- it would have been BRILLIANT. Listen to STAYING POWER live- powerful, awesome. In the studio... In 80s they also tried many different styles- but they did lose the sound, it wasn't coherent any more, it wasn't stylish- it was just one big mish mash, a mess... In 70s they were reinventing those different styles- Queen take on waltz, Queen take on heavy metal, Queen take on punk, Queen take on gospel etc. In 80s they were only copying what was already there. And what was already there wasn't good at all.
PS
In the days of all those "Queen RIP 1991" threads- this one is BRILLIANT :) More of the stuff like that!!!! :)

The only thing that one could blame Queen with regards to their legacy is that they became somewhat trapped in their 80s mega-glory, thus resorting to the release of LPs like Works and AKOM which in my opinion were really weak and too hit-oriented. Such albums didn't really add to their legacy. One could say that it gave some people solid ground to base their criticisms on.

Things became somewhat (but not a lot) better with Miracle and returned to their old glory with Innuendo, but it's doubtful whether this would have happened if it weren't for Freddie's illness. In a sense, Freddie's imminent end brought them back to surface.

While I'm not a huge fan of most of their 80s stuff either, I don't think they really hurt their legacy. Is Bohemian Rhapsody a lesser song because the same band made a song called "One Year Of Love" a few years later? In my opinion, no.

I think it's a shame that on The Works and A Kind Of Magic Queen didn't really try to come up with innovative music. A lot of it is just standard 80s pop. Some of it is even good, well produced and smartly written 80s pop (IWTBF, RGG, AKOM), but it's not the awe inspiring, sparkling, innovative music of the mid-70s. At least on Hot Space they *tried* to take their music into a new direction, although it wasn't really succesful.

I do think you can say that 80s pop in general hasn't aged very well, not just for Queen, but for most bands. Digital synths and drumbeats were all the rage, but nowadays they just sound cheap. Some songs were great, but the production just sucked. Just compare TFF's Mad World with Gary Jules' version, or Bonnie Taylor's Holding Out For A Hero, with Jennifer Saunders' remake.

I do like The Miracle, though. I think by that time Queen knew better how to integrate the synths into their music, without them sounding cheesy, and there are quite a few quality tunes on that album. On Innuendo they are right back on track, with a unique sound I haven't heard since.

I agree with you on most issues. Even Hot Space was groundbreaking for Queen: just look where they were in 1973 and what they produced only 9 years later. And certainly the legacy of e.g. Bohemian Rhapsody was not lessened by songs from Works or AKOM, however the overall picture of Queen was marred. It only took approximately 15 years since Freddie's death for contemporary critically acclaimed artists to finally find the strength to quote Queen as a major influence.

Thanks Fenderek, for the kind words and correction. I'm not an enormous Floyd fan and just remember the singles from 1980. And your point about the styles in the 80s in spot on. Queen had a sound and style in the 70s, and that was lost in the 80s. I think that the bit in the Magic Years when John and Mack talk about how they don't work as a group showed in those albums. You had 4 guys with 4 different agendas and musical interests trying to pull it together under a name. A song like Pain is so close to pleasure is very Motown-esque, but it seems totally out of place, like the band said "let's try a Motown style of song." It wasn't like that early on because their vast influences worked and the sounds were original Queen.

But that's just how a band works, it has to evolve and at some point you do say 'lets try a motown song' because you need to experiment or die.

The whole world moves on all the time and music has to as well, the 80's tracks are just a reflection of that fact.

If Freddie was alive today you can bet he would be working on 'current' styled influened music, he would certainly not be writing in the same style as in 1975.

[QUOTE][QUOTENAME]Togg wrote: [/QUOTENAME]But that's just how a band works, it has to evolve and at some point you do say 'lets try a motown song' because you need to experiment or die.
[/QUOTE]
I just have a feeling that when they were doing it in 70s there was an aim to it- when they did it with Pain/ Pleasure- it just seems for the sake of it... Nothing more... IMo, of course :)