A Decent Album But Not A Classic in the Queen Catalog

Queen's album A Kind of Magic, is the group making an effort to fall back on their rock roots. The album gives us a few great rockers, as well as a couple sweet ballads, but it's not one of their most memorable albums. The album features some classic rock, poppish type rock and orchestral rock music. I like it, don't get me wrong, but I much prefer their earlier rock albums from the 70s to this one. This lacks some of the deep, passionate rock you would expect to hear from Queen and it seems as if they put less effort into this album. That being said, I still enjoy the majority of these tunes.



Best Songs:



A Kind Of Magic: A fabulous song, quite surprisingly written by Roger Taylor. It has a perfect intro, and smoothly cuts into the song. Queen at their best.



One Vision: NOW THIS IS ROCK! A perfect rock song from the crew, and I love how they build up the big surge into the sheer, raw power of this track. Awesome.



Princes of the Universe: Another wonderful rock song. I love the melody to this one. Always one of my favourites.



One Year of Love: A very strong ballad, with impressive song writing from John Deacon. Good work on his part producing this masterpiece.



Worst Songs:



Pain is so close to Pleasure: A very corny Queen track that you get bored with. I don't care for this one at all.



Don't lose your head: Way to poppish and stupid. One of the worst off the album.



Overall, it is a fairly strong Queen album, with some classic rock tunes within it. I would recommend this album to the Queen fans who like their heavy stuff and poppish tunes. This album offers a lot of different sounds to it which is good, but I felt as if their wasn't an especially strong effort in the amount of work that went into writing and producing this album. Although we hear good moments, this album cannot be compared to the rock we get from albums such as The Game, A night at the opera, their debut, and Sheer Heart Attack. However, surely enough, we still get to hear some good rocking tunes, and no one does that better than Queen.

A kind of bad album.

The worst album by Queen. I can't believe all the praise it gets!! It's like some kind of conspiracy...



The album is pop metal, the tunes are weak, more that weak: they are annoying. The production is floppy... I have not enough words to describe thepiece of bad rock this albums represent. It's almost inredible this was the sam band that recorded THE GAME, A NIGHT AT THE OPERA and other masterpieces.

Queen goes back to doing what they do best - rocking

A Kind Of Magic (1986.) Queen's twelfth album.



Movie companies must have been impressed with the music Queen created for the 1980 film Flash Gordon, because six years later, the band got the opportunity to record music for another feature film - Highlander. At this point in their career, Queen was in a major identity crisis - it seems as if they were going to become nothing more than a Duran Duran rip-off - shameful considering their seventies rock triumphs. For the Highlander songs, would the band continue to exhibit signs of this identity crisis, or would they make the long-awaited return to normalcy? Read on for my review.



The first thing I need to state is that, despite what the end credits of the film claim, there is NO SUCH THING as a Highlander soundtrack. This is the closest thing there is to a soundtrack, and these are actually NOT THE SAME VERSIONS of the songs that appear in the film. That aside, let's get onto what counts - the music. This is when Queen went back to their rock and roll roots - at its time of release, it was easily their finest release since 1980's The Game. Don't be expecting a full-fledged return to normalcy, though - there are still plenty of keyboards and synthesizers to be found. However, unlike on Hot Space and The Works, they aren't the primary foundation of the music. At long last, the guitar of Brian May reigns as the supreme instrument again. If you were a Queen fan back when the band was releasing material and the two tragic missteps in the early-mid eighties disappointed you, more likely than not this album won you back over. After listening to those two albums, I found the band's future to be questionable, but this release shattered those doubts. Magic is arguably Queen's finest eighties album.



All of Queen's albums were remastered and reissued circa 1991. The remasters have expanded liner notes with lyrics and cool rare band/discography photos. There are even bonus tracks, but these are just lame remixes that are disposable. If you got the original CD release, it's pointless to buy the remasters. If you don't have the album yet though, get the remaster.



A Kind Of Magic would mark a short-lived return to greatness for Queen, which would be cut short only by Freddie Mercury's tragic passing away a few years later. In their final years the band would go back to creating rock and roll - it's a shame this newfound golden age didn't last longer. A Kind Of Magic is where this short-lived era of greatness began. While probably not the best place for a new fan to start, no Queen collection is complete without it.