it would be a flawless compilation. They did the odd good tune after that but really that best of is all I need. I think there should be a term to describe their albums: 'Mostly filler, some killer'.

Before I discovered the power of discernment I loved everything they did up until 'The Works'. I even rated 'Hot Space'. Blimey...

...I got into as a wee lad. Cash being scarce in those days, I had to save to buy a cassette, which I would then play to death. I can still remember the order I got them in - The Works first, then Queen II, Queen I, Night at the Opera, Day at the Races, The Game, Sheer Heart Attack, Flash

, then Hot Space. The latter was a huge WTF? moment, and by this point, I was saving up for David Bowie albums - the rather less than stellar "David Live" being my first choice, though luckily, I persevered (it had more songs on it for the same money)

I haven't played a Queen album in years, though I'm sure I'd still enjoy Queen II (a huge influence on Kurt Cobain, apparently)

Favourites at the time were The Prophet Song, Great King Rat and March of the Black Queen. I was also fascinated by Brian May's guitar orchestrations (surely he's got one of the finest arranging abilities in rock?)

Oh, and Freddie was probably the greatest frontman ever.

and represented everything that was wrong with the embarrassing 70s survivors still hanging around in the pop charts. I loathed them.

I'm still not keen. But "Don't Stop Me Now" is brilliant.

but along with Annie Lennox, Freddies voice is the one that makes me reach for the off button if they ever come on the radio. "I Want To Break Free" is very possibly my least favourite record of all time.

I think there are good and bad Queen songs. Most of the later ones are bad but there was some shocking stuff on the early albums along with the hits and a fair few others that could just have easily been singles too.

Uncle Wheaty completely, my sentiments entirely.

Leaving Queen and Queen II out of it, the run of albums from Sheer Heart Attack (1974) to News of the World (1977) was pretty damn good and although quality dropped off after that, they could still pull out at least one killer tune per album for many years, as someone noted above (Fat Bottomed Girls, Bicycle Race, Don't Stop Me Now, Another One Bites the Dust, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Under Pressure, Radio Gaga, I Want to Break Free, Hammer to Fall, One Vision, I Want It All ... all released 1978-89) ... then the Innuendo album (1991) was really a Freddie benediction - he died in November that year ...

Confession - I had a look at this thread then got lost on Spotify and Wikipedia, because - nostalgia - Queen were hitting their peak when I was starting secondary school and in those pre-punk days, a lot of Queen tunes were hard-wired into my pubescent brain ... Infatuations don't last of course and it was hard to be seen to like Queen after punk arrived. Aside from smiling at the videos, I more or less ignored them after News of the World ... their Live Aid performance jogged some happy memories, but the next thing to truly penetrate my consciousness was Fred's death ...

So much for me - and your point caller? Looking back now, they were a hairy-arsed rock band fronted by the campest man in showbiz, they could make your ears bleed (Tie Your Mother Down) or toss off a little music hall number (Seaside Rendezvous), release the most overblown faerie myth nonsense (most of Queen II) or regularly storm the pop charts (roughly 15 years of hit singles). I think that pretty much qualifies them as a band of interest, irrespective of the Marmite thing.

Finally, I know a poster above shrank at the idea of I Want to Break Free, but according to Brian May the video screwed up the American market for the group (too gay) - and it was initially banned by MTV. Banned by MTV - how cool is that?

that like most talented artists, they have had many fallow periods but always had the potential to come up with something surprising or of quality. Like most, I think their Seventies singles are unimpeachable, although the albums were variable with the exception of Night at the Opera (all good). In the Eighties they still made some great singles although not as many (AOBTD, Under Pressure). Unlike some, I think there are some outstanding songs on The Works: Radio Gaga is elegant and expresses a great sentiment; Hammer to Fall is a rousing rocker. Some of their best work was on the last 'proper' album Innuendo. The title track is one of my all-time fave Queen songs, a fantastic portmanteau redolent of their early themes. The response to other songs on the album (I'm Going Slightly Mad; These Are The Days Of Our Lives)is inevitably coloured by the context of Freddie's condition, but they are great songs nonetheless; the latter in particular never fails to move me.

So, Queen - a lot of good stuff, a lot of average by-numbers stuff, some utter dross; probably on a par with most artists of their longevity. But I wish Brian and Roger would retire the name with dignity, and not trawl it around like some two-bob whore.

Coronation Street imagery, cross-dressing, Fred as a Nijinskian faun, mad ballet, dry ice and transgression-a-go-go ... one of the best pop videos in the history of the world ever? And isn't Roger Taylor *pretty*?

Funnily enough, I just mentioned on another board about seeing Mott The Hoople at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1973. I am not ashamed to admit I went specifically to see the support act who were promoting their 5 month old debut album - 'Queen.' I loved them right through 'A Day At The Races.' I got 'News Of The World' for my 18th birthday and was, for the first time, disappointed with a Queen LP. That's where the love affair ended. Probably no coincidence that punk had reared its spiky head in the west country by then.

They made some records I liked, some I didn't. Then they played Sun City , so I thought they were shits. End of.

I liked a few Queen songs. But my Auntie Hilary, the staunch, church-going, uptight holier-than-thou one, was a huge Queen fan. I couldn't like Queen for that reason.

One day there was a problem. You remember those moments? You heard something said in a certain way by a certain person in a certain place which, as with Proust and his Madeline, burns itself into the psyche? This was such a moment. John "Eddie" Edwards, foul-mouthed sage of class 2E, late 1980, in the changing-rooms, post gym-class, having regaled us with a particularly ripe interpretation of Ottawan's D.I.S.C.O. passed on his opinions as regards one Frederic Bulsara. "Freddie fuckin' Mercury.. 'e's a fuckin' bender, innee? 'S why vey's cawed fuckin' Queen, innit? 'Cos 'e's a fuckin' poofter, innee?"

We, of course, begged to differ and asked for a reasoned debate to be opened on the matter. Eddie informed us that his older brother had told him so and that his brother would be delighted to join the debate in a somewhat physical manner.

We decided to adjourn. Eddie's Big Bruv being a noted nutter.

I did wonder, however, how Auntie Hilary would react if Eddie's brother's words proved true.

Ten years along, she shat purple bricks.

The main riff from Now I'm Here is still a proper killer, though. The first tune I heard on a serious bit of hi-fi. It sounded great.

are unutterable tosh. Piffle raised to grandiosity by rococo flourish and and innumerable layers of lacquer.

They for me form a triumvirate of tosh - along with ELO and Abba.

The one quality that informs almost any music I truly care for is a quality of soul.

Even Kraftwerk have soul. Queen and the others above do not. It's that simple really.

All at the Glasgow Apollo. The last album I bought of theirs was the Game and it was all downhill from there for me. Seeing May & Taylor on X Factor last week even surpassed their collaboration with 5ive for sheer desperation. At least John Deacon had the good grace to retire before things got too bad.

The best Queen album I've heard since A Day At The Races is A Night At the Hip Hopera by The Kleptones. Check it out at http://www.kleptones.com/pages/downloads_hiphopera.html

Interesting how their trip to Sun City is never mentioned these days

what a great record that is. Chic with a handlebar moustache and leather strides.

wrote a couple of million sellers and disappeared into dignified retirement while the other two built a bouncy castle on Fred's grave.

No excuse for 'Sun City'.
Just look at all the flack Dusty Springfield went through in the 60s over refusing to play to segregated audiences in South Africa, and then in the dire 1980s they go down that route. Poor.

Also, they always looked awful......didn't they?
And to make your first, and not your last, record in 1973 is simply climbing the big mountain after everyone has already stuck a flag in it.

Still prefer them to the Clash though.

And worry about the personal life later. Most of my musical heros have behaved like pillocks at some point in their lives and many of them made it a large part of their career.
I'm not the world's greatest Queen fan, never saw them live though I'd have liked to. But Killer Queen is one of the best pop records of all time and back in the early 80s their Greatest Hits was my housework tape of choice. I have very fond memories of my daughter pedaling about the garden on her little tricycle and singing "I want to ride my bicycle" etc. at the top of her voice. For that alone, they're great.
PS I also like marmite (but prefer vegemite)

group. although the "nothing really matters to me" end of that song they did is good.

To be forgiven? Not really ... but as someone mentioned above, it's interesting what we expect of our rock stars ...

Flirting with fascist iconography? Acceptable, by and large - think punk swastikas, or new wave band names. Supporting a pernicious and violent worldwide drugs trade by hoovering up vast amounts of coke? Yeah, fine. Acting disgracefully towards young female groupies? Bit of a lad. Behaving like an adolescent git and ending up in A&E where the taxpayer picks up the bill? Woo, rock'n'roll. Self-centred to the point of suicide, causing immense grief to friends and family? Part of the myth. Breaking a cultural boycott on apartheid South Africa? Oh hey now, wait a minute, that's *terrible* ... (Of course, it is terrible, but it's funny how 'rock stars' are still expected to be left wing and progressive.)

They were a singles band weren't they ? they shouldn't have played Sun City, they probably had the best frontman vocalist ever, they wore embarrassing clothes,their legacy is slim but strong.

to accuse ELO and ABBA and Queen of having no soul is to misunderstand soul in music, I think all three had soul especially when you compare them to most of todays music.

Queen records are brilliant: great songs, well performed, well made. But I can’t stand them. Makes perfect sense to me.

I neither love nor hate them. Their songs are subjected to gross over-exposure, but Boh Rhap, 7 Seas, Fat BG and one or two others are top quality.

I can well imagine Jamie Afro/Archer becoming ther new lead singer. If they want to bring Queen to a new audience, he's probably a good choice.

Kind Of Magic was "my" era, coming out just as I was getting into secondary school and pop music. And I still think it sounds wonderful.

Sun City, unfortunate - bad, even - but as I've said on another topic, the Catholic church is responsible for incredible quantities of human suffering but I'm happy to listen to a nice Palestrina mass!

I must take issue with MrRadio's "slim legacy" comment though. Their influence on some of the biggest bands of the 1990s and 2000s - I'm thinking Faith No More, Smashing Pumpkins, Muse, Foo Fighters - was deep and strong. I'll bet supposedly cooler bands like Radiohead and Metallica have a few Queen albums stashed away too....

and that is the Beatles