Consumer Guide Album

Queen: Greatest Hits [Hollywood, 1992]
It took me years with periodic pep talks from my daughter to admit with more delight than I would have figured that while I'd never warmed to the art-rock glitz of these international standouts, most of these 17 songs are good-humored rather than melodramatic--played not for laughs, but for ebullience and sprezzatura. I assume that no matter how many alternate versions of the 1992 Hollywood-label best-of have surfaced here and there (some of which including my own would seem to do without "Bohemian Rhapsody"), the lead tracks here are universal from "We Will Rock You" to "We Are the Champions" to "Another One Bites the Dust"--and also that "Fat Bottomed Girls," "Bicycle Race," and "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" are for normal humans every bit as enjoyable. Just in general the grandiosity that always annoyed me about them from a distance is played not for laughs, but to highlight an unmistakable joie de vivre very much bound up in Freddie Mercury's loud and joyous clarity. A-