Music Times believes that it's never too late to go back and try something old. Throwback Thursdays will go back and pull out an album that's at least 10 years old, so that you can find something new, or revisit something you've forgotten about.
Week of 11/014/2013
WHO: Queen
WHAT: Queen II
WHEN: 1974
Queen II begins, as any album does, with its album art. Queen as a band more-or-less began with the cover for its second record as well.
Queen always had ambitions of grandiosity. The problem, the band found, was that Queen wasn't grandiose enough. As a result, Queen II reached for the stars, incorporating all of the elements that easygoing fans of the band will recognize from its biggest hits.
Freddie Mercury handled the albums second, "black," half. His contributions to the record's flamboyance include fantastical lyrical themes for tracks such as "Ogre Battle" and "The Fairy-Feller's Master-Stroke," and the vocalist added piano and harpsichord instrumentals to keep the music big. Brain May had more of a hand on the album's "white" half, layering guitar solos for tracks including "The White Queen (As It Began)" and "Father to Son."
Naturally, such an extravagant sound didn't sit well with many of the day's critics. Robert Christgau, for example, described it as "wimpoid royaloid heavyoid android void" (as he did most prog/glam records). Critics who thought Queen II was overblown would have their minds boggled by the band's masterpiece, A Night At The Opera, which would come out the next year. Many casual fans recognize Queen for albums like Opera, but such a record never would have occurred if it weren't for fans support of Queen II, the band's most under-appreciated record.