Do you know, do you know, do you know just how I feel?
"God, why does he look sad?! He's already destroyed mankind; what else could he want?!"
— Stewie Griffin, who's afraid of the cover, Family Guy, "Killer Queen"
News of the World is the sixth studio album by Queen, released in 1977 through EMI in the UK and Elektra Records in the US. Following the release of A Day at the Races the previous year, the members of Queen decided to move away from the densely-layered Progressive Rock sound of that album and A Night at the Opera in favor of returning to the comparatively stripped-back Hard Rock style of their first three albums, with Freddie Mercury stating that what had become "the Queen style" had been "done to death."
At the same time, the music world was undergoing a massive sea change with the rise of Punk Rock, which Queen were seen as the direct opposite of. While Brian May denied claims that News of the World was a deliberate response to punk, he did consider the timing of the band's change in sound fortuitous, and Roger Taylor's contributions to the album were written as retorts to punk rock. Fittingly, Queen would end up interacting with punk's biggest representatives, the Sex Pistols, while both bands were booked at Wessex Studios — Queen for this album, the Pistols for Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols.
Upon release, News of the World was a major commercial success for Queen, peaking at No. 4 on the UK Albums chart and No. 3 on the Billboard 200, also topping the charts in the Netherlands and France. The album would also go on to be certified quadruple-platinum in the United States, triple-platinum in Canada, Platinum in Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, and gold in the UK, France, and Italy.
News of the World was supported by three singles: the double-A-side "We Are the Champions"/"We Will Rock You", "Spread Your Wings", and "It's Late".
If you were looking for the British tabloid, information is at British Newspapers.
Tracklist:
Side One
- "We Will Rock You" (2:01)
- "We Are the Champions" (2:59)
- "Sheer Heart Attack" (3:26)
- "All Dead, All Dead" (3:10)
- "Spread Your Wings" (4:34)
- "Fight from the Inside" (3:03)
Side Two
- "Get Down, Make Love" (3:51)
- "Sleeping on the Sidewalk" (3:06)
- "Who Needs You" (3:05)
- "It's Late" (6:26)
- "My Melancholy Blues" (3:29)
Principal Members:
- John Deacon - bass, guitar, percussion
- Brian May - guitar, backing and lead vocals, percussion
- Freddie Mercury - lead vocals, piano, cowbell, percussion
- Roger Taylor - drums, percussion, backing and lead vocals, guitar, bass
These tropes will rock you!:
- A Cappella: "We Will Rock You". The song is generally set in a cappella form, using only stomping and clapping as a rhythmic beat, except at the very end, which has a guitar solo.
- Alternate Album Cover:
- The original South Korean release used the upper half of the gatefold interior illustration as its cover art due to the government considering the UK cover too violent. A 1992 LP reissue would restore the original artwork.
- For Comic Con London 2017, the album was reissued with a remake of the original cover by Mike del Mundo, depicting Sentinel, Old Man Logan, Kitty Pride, and Colossus from the X-Men series in place of the giant robot and band members. Of note is that both Marvel Comics and Hollywood Records (Queen's US label since 1990) are owned by Disney.
- Age-Progression Song: The three verses of "We Will Rock You" address, in order, a boy, a young man, and an old man.
- Alliterative Title: "Sleeping On The Sidewalk".
- And Call Him "George": The wide-eyed giant robot on the album cover is unaware why its new playthings have stopped moving; this is highlighted by original, Queen-free version of the painting, which was captioned "Please... fix it, Daddy?"
- Animated Music Video: "All Dead, All Dead" received one
in 2017, depicting a cat wandering through the ruins of the giant robot on the album cover. - Audience Participation Song: "We Will Rock You" and "We Are The Champions" were very popular during Queen's arena rock shows and Freddie often used the opportunity to have everybody sing along.
- Badass Boast: "We Are The Champions".I consider it a challenge to the whole human race
And I ain't gonna lose! - Bowdlerise: The South Korean release was censored by the Park Chung-hee government by replacing the original cover with a crop of the gatefold interior art and excising "Get Down, Make Love" from the tracklist.
- Break Up Song: "It's Late", "Who Needs You", "My Melancholy Blues" are all about this topic.
- Brief Accent Imitation: Brian May sings "Sleeping on the Sidewalk" in an American accent, tying in with the song's blues sound. The song even uses American vernacular, with the narrator noting how he owes his label "a million bucks a year" as opposed to "a million quid."
- Design Student's Orgasm: The album cover is based on a painting by Frank Kelly Freas, an artist best known for painting scenes of science fiction stories. The image, originally featured on the cover of the October 1953 issue◊ of Astounding Science Fiction magazine, showed a giant intelligent robot holding a human corpse. The members of Queen asked Freas if he could paint the exact same image, only with them in place of the corpse. At the bottom of the image is an arena with its roof torn down, with the implication the robot plucked them mid-concert - and the inner sleeve is the robot continuing his rampage going for the panicking crowd◊.
- Everything Is an Instrument: The rhythm of "We Will Rock You" was achieved by the band members clapping their hands and stomping on wood planks with heavy boots, multi-tracked and processed with tape delay.
- Face on the Cover: The band members are shown on the album cover, but as victims in the hand of a giant robot.
- Genre Roulette: "Who Needs You" has a Spanish guitar arrangement, complete with some Gratuitous Spanish by Freddie.
- Giant Robot Hands Save Lives: Subverted on the album cover.
- Gratuitous Panning: "Who Needs You" features Freddie Mercury's vocals panned entirely to the right channel, while the guitar is panned entirely to the left. Everything else is centered in the mix.
- Grief Song: "All Dead, All Dead", about Brian May's cat. "My Melancholy Blues", a sad song about feeling blue.
- Heavy Meta: "Sheer Heart Attack", penned by Roger Taylor, is notably a Take That! at the emerging punk scene... in the form of a punk song!
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The liner notes label each verse in "It's Late" as a "scene," tying in with Brian May's intention for the song to act as the musical equivalent of a three-act play.
- Incredibly Long Note:
- The choruses of "Sheer Heart Attack" feature Roger Taylor holding every instance of "sheer" and "real" for six seconds each.
- The "of the wooooooooooooooooooooooooooorld" at the end of the first chorus of "We Are the Champions", and at the end of its live renditions. If one listens to any of the available Rock Band stems note of this particular song, Freddie holds the note for so long that it seeps into the recording studio's reverb and disappears. Technically, in the final mix, the note never ends.
- Intercourse with You: "Get Down, Make Love".Make love inside your bed, everybody get down make love.
- Ironic Echo: In the first chorus of "Sleeping on the Sidewalk", the narrator, a homeless, trumpet-playing street performer, states that "I may get hungry but I sure don't wanna go home." After becoming a fabulously rich professional musician, he states that "I don't get hungry and I sure don't wanna go home." Finally, after walking out on his employers after a falling out over his fading popularity, he returns to his life of homeless street performing, but finds that he misses being rich and famous, grumbling that "I sure get hungry and I sure do wanna go home".
- Kindhearted Cat Lover: "All Dead, All Dead", about one of Brian May's dead cats.
- Lyrical Dissonance: "Who Needs You", a cosy, relaxing Spanish guitar track about Freddie claiming he doesn't need a former lover anymore. Even more dissonance stems from the fact that the song was written by John Deacon, who also penned such break-up songs as "Another One Bites the Dust" and "I Want to Break Free", while being the only one in the group to have had a singular, long, happy marriage (1975 - present).
- Lyric Video: In the Animated Music Video for "All Dead, All Dead", most of the song lyrics appear on various parts of the giant robot's innards while the cat wanders through them.
- Music Is Politics: In "Sleeping on the Sidewalk", the narrator gets scouted by a rich record executive and becomes a massively famous trumpet player. However, after a while, his popularity wanes and he finds himself deeply in debt to his record label, motivating him to quit in favor of returning to his former life as a homeless street performer.
- New Sound Album: While not outright ditching the Glam Rock base of Queen's sound, News of the World shifts their material into a more commercially-accessible direction, a response to the fading popularity of Progressive Rock and concurrent rise of Punk Rock.
- No Ending: "Sheer Heart Attack" kind of just...stops. Not to the effect of the band just abruptly stopping, but...imagine if you were listening to the song and someone came over and turned off the device that was playing it immediately after the chorus. The abruptness of the ending is highlighted by the few seconds between it and the start of "All Dead, All Dead".
- Non-Appearing Title: The album title. Unusual for Queen, this is actually averted for every song on the album.
- Non-Indicative Name: "My Melancholy Blues" is in fact, a jazzy, piano-driven torch ballad. The one true blues song on the album is "Sleeping on the Sidewalk".
- Pep-Talk Song: "We Will Rock You", "We Are the Champions", "Spread Your Wings", "Fight from the Inside" are all songs about beating people who bring you down and triumphing in the end.
- Performance Video: The videos for both "We Will Rock You" and "Spread Your Wings", shot during the same session, feature the band miming on a stage in Roger Taylor's backyard.
- The Power of Love: "Sheer Heart Attack" about love for somebody that is so powerful that it borders a heart attack.
- Record Producer: Like A Day at the Races before it, Queen are credited as the sole producers on this album. This time around, though, they were "assisted by" Mike Stone, who Wikipedia treats as a de-facto co-producer.
- Re-Cut: 8-track releases of the album move "Spread Your Wings" from track 5 to track 3 in order to accommodate the format's four-program layout.
- Self-Backing Vocalist: Freddie on "Get Down, Make Love", Roger on "Fight from the Inside", Brian on "Sleeping on the Sidewalk".
- Self-Deprecation: The remix of "We Will Rock You" included as a bonus track on the 1991 remaster proudly proclaims in its subtitle that it was "ruined by Rick Rubin."
- Questioning Title?: Played with regarding "Who Needs You", which is framed as a question in the context of the song but lacks a question mark in the actual title.
- Siamese Twin Songs: "We Will Rock You" and "We Are The Champions" fade almost directly into each other, to the point where not only were they released as a double-A-side, but they're also always paired together on compilation albums. What's more, during concert shows, sport manifestations, and parties, the songs are usually played directly after one another (except during the 1986 "Magic" tour, which had "Friends Will Be Friends" played between them).
- Something Blues: "My Melancholy Blues".
- Step Up to the Microphone:
- Brian May sings on "All Dead, All Dead", a Grief Song for his late cat, and "Sleeping on the Sidewalk".
- Roger Taylor sings the choruses of "Sheer Heart Attack" and lead vocals on "Fight from the Inside".
- Sudden Musical Ending: "Sheer Heart Attack" ends with the audio abruptly cutting out, followed by a few seconds of silence.
- Take That!:
- "We Are the Champions" was described by Freddie as being a "take that" directed to the music press, which almost always gave the band horrendous reviews (ex: Rolling Stone describing Queen as "the first fascist rock band" etc.) yet they continued to be one of the world's most popular and best selling bands. When the rest of the band heard Freddie do the first run-through of the song they "fell out laughing", knowing exactly whom he was slagging.
- "Fight from the Inside" and "Sheer Heart Attack" (both written by Roger) are Take Thats at the then-emerging punk scene.
- Title Track: "Sheer Heart Attack" is one for a completely different album, being an outtake from it that was repurposed here.
"Why does robot hold dead people?! Is that future or past?!"
— Charles Yamamoto, just before his death of a sheer heart attack, Family Guy, "Killer Queen"
