I have been waiting a long time to get back into this one. Give or take two or three years! It is one of 21 albums that I have been meaning to revisit at some point, and what an album it is! This record is about as good as I remember it. Sure, I have a few minor production problems from what I heard here and there, but despite that, this album was well worth the wait! Nearly everything on this record sounds great! The production is super creative and so exciting that it’s like fireworks going off in your ears! The composition has that classic rock feel with very catchy riffs but, there are also tracks that go off the deep end, into something a little more epic. It’s an album split in two between fun and heavy, and it executes both very well. Even with this album’s flaws, it really makes me happy.
PRODUCTION
A Night At The Opera is a pretty clean and clear record from a sound quality standpoint.
The instruments are handled quite gracefully. The guitars are nice and clear. The acoustic guitars on ’39 are prime examples of this. They’re really full sounding. Electric guitars do a nice job of filling out sound when they’re in the background. The bass is audible, although I wish it were more prominent. Lead guitars are always prominent, even if it is at the expense of balance, which I’ll get to in a second. The drums are a bit interesting to me. When they’re given an equal role in the mix, their clarity and punchiness shines through. But I feel like this album does not give drums enough room to shine. Sometimes, drums are really quiet when they really should be given an equal role. The whole band ducks for the guitar solos. While I do like melodies on top, I feel like the guitar should be making its own space. It’s the backing band’s job to back the melody up, and to me, the production shouldn’t artificially nerf that backing band. And weirdly enough, there are moments where harmonies fill out the sound on tracks such as ’39, but also there are moments such as “Sweet Lady” with Freddie’s lone vocals fighting to be heard over the band. I find myself losing the plot a bit as to what they were going for from a mixing standpoint. WHAT ARE YOU?! More balance and a more well-rounded, cohesive sound would be good for this album, and I feel a balanced sound could add a lot more grandeur. But on this album, mixing is kind of scatterbrained.
The panning and effects, however, are among some of the most creative and flashy I’ve heard in music! This album immediately brings the heat in this regard with those leads coming in to tickle your ears one at a time on Death On Two Legs, the opening track. And we’re just getting started! Multitracking and layering are this album’s forte as far as production is concerned. There’s hard-panning at the end of ’39: a typical old-school rock trope which gives this album character. But there’s also a guitar lead panning from left to right at the end of Sweet Lady. And this is not even getting into The Prophet’s Song and Bohemian Rhapsody, the two epics of this album! Part of why these two songs work is from vocal layering alone. Freddie Mercury is obviously an incredible vocalist, but the vocal layering on those two songs is what really makes him pop. The a cappella section of The Prophet’s Song in particular is one of my favourite moments of the whole album. It just sounds so full, yet so creative! The Prophet’s Song’s chords paint such a vivid and colourful sonic picture! I wish this production were more cohesive, but man, does it have its moments!
COMPOSITION
Composition is one of the big selling points for this album, even if the production doesn’t handle it as well as I would have hoped. Pianos are beautiful right from the get-go and then transition into something more biting with staccato chords. Bohemian Rhapsody is famous for this, among other things. The synths on You’re My Best Friend are great as well. When you can hear bass, you can hear really nice licks on You’re My Best Friend in particular (it’s like the bassist primarily wrote the song or something). It’s not the flashiest instrument of the bunch but listening for it is really rewarding! Drums are similar, but they’re louder because someone needs to keep time. They keep time as well as keep the vibe of each song. They’re not technically complicated, but they are really groovy on those swung tracks, whether midtempo on You’re My Best Friend and Lazing on A Sunday Afternoon, or fast swing on Seaside Rendezvous and Good Company. There are epic crash filled patterns on The Prophet’s Song and In Love With My Car and more lowkey folksy patterns on ’39. And speaking of diversity, how can I talk about this album without mentioning guitars?! Not only is this album a mainly guitar-led album, but the guitars leading it are great. The rhythm guitars add some girth to this record and add a quite solid foundation: a foundation for lead guitars to do their thing and shine! Lead guitars always have a lick or two to keep you hooked, especially in that first half. They are pretty noodly throughout each song and the solos are even more noodly and ambitious, but always fit the mold of each song. They burst through and add flash and power to this record!
Speaking of the mold of each song, structure is pretty neat on this record. At first, I thought this record had no flow whatsoever and the songs had no rhyme or reason as to why they were where they were. Then I realized that this album was released in 1975 and therefore, would most likely be primarily sold in vinyl, which has a Side A and a Side B. The first side is from the raging opener in Death on Two Legs to the peppy and fun Seaside Rendezvous. This first side is what I like to call the “Night” section because it is populated with the fun songs that Queen would play in a concert setting. (Oh God, I miss concerts so much). These songs are fun and accessible (I’m pretty sure I heard You’re My Best Friend in commercials a million times). They have hints of The Beatles, and ragtime, but also Queen’s swing style. That first half is a fun night out! Then, when that half is over, you get the second half, which is far deeper and far more experimental. This is the “Opera” section. This goes from the epic The Prophet’s Song to the closer in Queen’s cover of the British national anthem, God Save The Queen, which wraps up the record with a nice little bow as that’s what they would play as they took their bows and finished their shows. Each song transitions fairly effortlessly in this section, especially from The Prophet’s Song to Love of My Life. However, the meat of this section is in its long, operatic songs in The Prophet’s Song and Bohemian Rhapsody. These heavyweights are massive in scope and have multiple movements but behave differently. The Prophet’s Song focusses on heaviness and being epic and large while Bohemian Rhapsody is more of a heartfelt showstopper. I revere Bohemian Rhapsody so much partially because of its popularity and how it defined musical ambition in its time, but also how it transitions from one movement to the next. Hell, I named an award after it, “The Bohemian Rhapsody Award For Best Song with Multiple Parts” that I bestow upon one song per decade. That song was the first representing the 70s, then came Metallica’s Orion for the 80s, Radiohead’s Paranoid Android for the 90s, then Green Day’s Jesus of Suburbia for the 2000s and Kendrick Lamar’s mAAd city for the 2010s. Good company! Needless to say, Queen’s A Night At The Opera has a lot going for it compositionally.
LYRICS
The lyrics on this thing are anywhere from your standard classic rock fare to Beatles vibes to absolutely legendary! There is not a bad song on here from a lyrical standpoint and the people who sing them are always on point! Before I get to you know who, let’s talk about everyone else, shall we? Roger Taylor’s voice on In Love With My Car is gravelly and passionate, but also has a bit of clean niceness to it. It’s like if the passionate gruffness of Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters and the lightness of Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour somehow meshed into one unit. Brian May’s vocals on Good Company are very Beatles-esque and whimsical. This is helped by the harmonies behind him, which might surpass the Fab Four, there I said it! Throughout the album, there are harmonies that often dominate the record whether you like it or not. They are mixed over the lead vocals too often than I’d like, but man are they nice and full. The a cappella section in particular with the call and response from Freddie and the boys on harmonies is amazing! But nothing quite compares to the man himself, Freddie Mercury! He was one of the greatest frontmen since Cab Calloway and of course, he’s amazing on this record. He displays his tonal capability as he can go really clean on songs like Love of My Life as well as see him go really loud and passionate on You’re My Best Friend with that high C he hits. His sense of timing is impeccable on the a cappella part of The Prophet’s Song where he plays around with the delay effect. With all that said, I believe feeling behind your vocals is the most important thing you can have, and Freddie Mercury must have thought so too. His voice is expressive from the get-go, doing exactly what the song calls for at all times! He’s spiteful on the opener, sad on Love of My Life and whimsical on Lazing on A Sunday Afternoon. You feel every single note this man sings. He commands so much power from his voice alone! Man, part of me wishes that I could be alive to see this guy perform live!
As for lyrical analysis, this was a bit of a puzzle to decipher. Like I said, I thought that there was little to no cohesion from start to finish, as I was expecting an overarching theme throughout the album, because opera does that, and the album is called “A Night At The Opera”. This doesn’t do that entirely. However, that Side A/Side B thing really comes into play here as they play with two different lyrical structures. The first side has little to no connective tissue, but it’s structured in the most diverse way possible. This is the “Night” section, after all and these are the accessible pop tracks that everyone wants to hear. It darts from concrete to abstract from song to song, but they are all jams! This is the concert setlist that everyone parties to. But once the party’s over, we get to Side B, and those who stick around get to hear an “opera” about how Queen really feels about their current situation. It goes deeper and deeper into how Freddie and the rest of the band think. It starts large yet urgent on The Prophet’s Song and we keep zooming in as the album goes along. Love of My Life is a heartfelt ballad about Freddie Mercury’s relationship with Mary Austin and how much he misses her. Even Good Company, as whimsical as it is, is a really sad song about pouring over your work so hard that you neglect your friends and grow old and die alone. Ironic that Freddie apparently didn’t contribute to that song, eh? And it all culminates on Bohemian Rhapsody, a song about a man who commits a murder, then has to leave his family, then goes insane until finally resigning himself to whatever may come of him. Theoretically, this song was probably about Freddie Mercury coming out as bisexual and dealing with the consequences brought on by a homophobic society. Either way, it just hit me like a truck! Maybe it was what was sung, maybe it was how it was sung, or just it’s placement on the album as a showstopping number at the end of the track listing, which makes the actual triumphant closer, God Save The Queen, that much sadder, but either way, I was just floored! This album does everything right from a lyrical standpoint and I’m left without words!
CONCLUSION
Yeah, I love this record. I loved it when I first listened to it and I still love it now that I’m revisiting it and going over it with a fine-tooth comb. First, let’s talk about the bad, or rather, the not excellent. The instruments are recorded nice and clearly and the production is definitely high gloss. However, mixing kind of nerfs that because this album’s mixing makes instruments quieter and louder all willy-nilly and consequently, balance is a major issue. Drums fall in and out of the mix on some songs like the opener. The singer is sometimes fighting to be heard, ironically over overpowering harmonies. I would prefer a more streamlined sound to make for a more cohesive identity for this record, at least from a production standpoint. With all that said, all the little things Queen does with panning on this record are really creative and exciting. This record is a fun one to listen to and it’s thanks to this production that makes these tracks jump around between your ears in a very cool way. The composition is as massive as advertised! There is a large array of instruments from bass to koto (a traditional Japanese instrument) which all have a role to play, even if guitars are the most prevalent instrument. These guitars are great, licks are great, solos are amazing, I like it! The album’s structure is quite interesting too, even if it took a bit for me to realize it. Side A is your typical classic rock album full of bangers. It’s basically a concert setlist and it would make for a fun “night” out if these were performed live. Side B is the “Opera” section where the more epic and emotional songs are, and it’s where Bohemian Rhapsody is, which is an amazing song itself and deserves its legendary benchmark status in music history. Lyrics are another strong point for this record. The singers who aren’t Freddie Mercury are great on their own and on those full-sounding harmonies. But Freddie Mercury is a legend who shows his unparalleled vocal talent at every opportunity he gets. He’s got vocal range, dynamic range, tonal range, timing and emotional depth all from his voice, and we mere mortals never deserved a frontman like him. He’s so good on this record that it makes me think those people who say they were “born in the wrong generation” might actually be right because I wish I could have been alive to see this guy perform. A broken clock is right twice a day, after all! And all this is not bringing up the lyrics. That “night” and “opera” structure I keep mentioning shows up on lyrics too. The first side is fun pop songs for everyone to enjoy, and the second side are the emotional tours de force that blew me away! They sound so personal and true to how Queen and Freddie Mercury must have been feeling at the time. This is an excellent album from start to finish with flaws, yes, but not a truly bad song. I can see why people call this Queen’s magnum opus because wow. This is an amazing record and a deserving benchmark in music history.
I’m giving this a Decent 9/10.
FAVOURITE TRACKS: Lazing on A Sunday Afternoon, In Love With My Car, You're My Best Friend, '39, Seaside Rendezvous, The Prophet's Song, Love of My Life, Good Company, Bohemian Rhapsody, God Save The Queen
LEAST FAVOURITE TRACK: Death on Two Legs (Dedicated To...)
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