Music / Queen II

"I'll take you to the Seven Seas of Rhye"

"Kings will be crowned,
And the word goes around
From father to son, to son!"

—"Father to Son"

Queen II is the second album by British Glam Rock band Queen, released in 1974 through EMI in the UK and Elektra Records in the US. Notable for its combination of a heavy Progressive Rock sound with an art rock sensibility, it is designed as a loose Concept Album with themes running throughout each side—the "White Side" is more emotional, while the "Black Side" is darker and more fantastic. Despite all of its numerous overdubs and effects, the album was recorded in a relative breakneck pace at the time of only one month.

Tracklist:

Side White

1. "Procession" (1:12)
2. "Father to Son" (6:14)
3. "White Queen (As It Began)" (4:34)
4. "Some Day One Day" (4:23)
5. "The Loser in the End" (4:02)

Side Black

1. "Ogre Battle" (4:10)
2. "The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke" (2:40)
3. "Nevermore" (1:15)
4. "The March of the Black Queen" (6:33)
5. "Funny How Love Is" (2:50)
6. "Seven Seas of Rhye" (2:50)

Principal members:

• John Deacon: bass, acoustic guitar
• Brian May: guitars, backing vocals, lead vocals ("Some Day One Day"), bells, piano, organ
• Freddie Mercury: lead vocals (except "Some Day One Day" and "The Loser in the End"), backing vocals, piano, harpsichord
• Roger Taylor: drums, backing vocals, lead vocals ("The Loser in the End"), percussion

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Here come the Black Tropes poking in the pile:

• Album Intro Track: "Procession."
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: The titular character from "The March of the Black Queen" is known to 'boil' (people), 'bake' (people) and to 'never dot her "i"s'.
• Ascetic Aesthetic: The album cover - the background is completely black, and the band themselves are all dressed in black as well.
• Bohemian Parody: The most common visual motif of these actually starts with the cover of this album. The band would use the same arrangement for the promotional video of "Bohemian Rhapsody", which in turn draws many of its musical characteristics from the material on this album.
• Book Ends: "White Queen" begins and ends the same way. This was most definitely intentionally done to mirror the song's thematic progression, with "As It Began" being the subtitle of the song.
  • "Ogre Battle" begins with its ending in reverse.
• Break-Up Song: "Nevermore" is a short song about the feelings of heartbreak after a breakup.
• Color Motif: The two sides of the record are named "Side White" (majority written by May with exception of Taylor's lone song) and "Side Black" (all songs written by Mercury). The band wore black and white attire for the album and associated concerts, and Mercury and May even wore respective black and white nail polish on their left hands.
• Concept Album: It isn't really an example, but each side has some linking themes among all of its songs, with the possible exception being Roger Taylor's "The Loser in the End". Brian May wrote the other songs on "Side White", and Freddie Mercury wrote all of the songs on "Side Black".
• Distinct Single Album: A variant of the "distinct double album" trope - each LP side here has its own lyrical theme that loosely binds all the songs on the side. May also wrote all but the last song on side one, while Mercury wrote all of the songs on side two. The songs on side one tend to be focused on family relationships and love, while there's a fantasy theme to a lot of the songs on side two; similarly, side two tends to be heavier musically than side one. This isn't a hard and fast rule, though; "Father to Son" gets pretty heavy at times, and "Nevermore" and "Funny How Love Is" are both about matters of the heart.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The Prog Rock tendencies of the first album are taken up to eleven here. The band would still occasionally dabble in the style on future releases, particularly on A Night at the Opera with "The Prophet's Song" and (most famously) "Bohemian Rhapsody", but it would never be the dominant style of any of their albums again. This album's "Black Side" is also arguably the heaviest they ever got as a band, either musically or lyrically.
• Echoing Acoustics: Throughout the album, though probably most noticeable on "Funny How Love Is", since it's a central part of the "wall of sound" technique.
• Epic Rocking: "The March of the Black Queen" (6:33) and "Father to Son" (6:14). On a broader scale, most of the album consists of suites that run for between eight and twelve minutes; only three songs are not connected to one of these suites.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: "The Loser in the End".
• Face on the Cover: Mick Rock's iconic cover photograph containing the band's faces arranged in a diamond formation, which is probably one of the most famous photographs used on an album cover - although ironically, not because it appeared on this album, but because it formed the basis for their now-iconic "Bohemian Rhapsody" video. The only other thing appearing on the cover is the album title text.
• Fake-Out Fade-Out: "The March of the Black Queen"...
  "Forget your singalongs and your lullabies
  Surrender to the city of the fireflies..."
• Fading into the Next Song: On Side White, "Procession", "Father to Son", and "White Queen (As It Began)" merge seamlessly into one another (a collective 12:03 suite). On Side Black, "Ogre Battle" merges into "Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke", which then merges into "Nevermore" (a collective 8:08 suite), then "The March of the Black Queen" merges into "Funny How Love Is" (a collective 9:24 suite). This means that only "Some Day One Day", "The Loser in the End", and "Seven Seas of Rhye" are not part of larger suites.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: The title character in "The March of the Black Queen" is clearly not a nice lady.
• Heartbeat Soundtrack: "Procession".
• Heavy Mithril: The entire "black side" (which includes "Seven Seas of Rhye", "The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke", "Ogre Battle", and "March of the Black Queen".)
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The LP release is divided between a "Side White" and a "Side Black." LP reissues by Hollywood Records and Virgin EMI even color-code the labels for each side.
• Inspiration Nod: The band recorded the album in August 1973, shortly after Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon was at the peak of its popularity. Both albums have a heartbeat fade-in on the opening track.
• Instrumental: "Procession".
• Ironic Nursery Rhyme: "Seven Seas of Rhye" is a surreal, apocalyptic A God Am I rant by Freddie Mercury including such lyrics as "I'll defy the laws of nature and come out alive / and then I'll get you." It ends by fading into a sample of the old music-hall tune "I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside".
• Making Love in All the Wrong Places: "Funny How Love Is" advises doing this, although it may be meant metaphorically.
  "If you've gotta make love, do it everywhere."
• Miniscule Rocking: "Procession" (1:12) and "Nevermore" (1:15), though possibly subverted as both are movements of much longer suites (twelve and eight minutes, respectively).
• Mood Whiplash: Because it's a Queen album, it uses this with almost every song transition, and sometimes within songs as well.
• Mundane Made Awesome: "The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke", describing the painting of the same name, is about fairy-folk waiting for one of their own to chop a nut with his axe.
• Musical Pastiche: "Funny How Love Is" was produced using the "Wall of Sound" technique pioneered by the now-infamous Record Producer Phil Spector, and bears some strong stylistic resemblances to several of his productions, particularly the Ronettes' "Be My Baby", although the melody is quite different.
• Sanity Slippage Song: The traditional song "Oh, I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside" which plays at the end of "Seven Seas of Rhye".
• Shout-Out:
  • As mentioned above, the heartbeat opening of "Procession" is an intentional homage to Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon, which had been released the previous year.
  • Mercury was inspired to write "The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke" after seeing the Richard Dadd painting of the same name. The lyrics also make extensive references to several of Dadd's characters in his accompanying poem, "Elimination of a Picture & its Subject—called The Feller's Master Stroke".
  • As mentioned above, "Funny How Love Is" was produced using the "Wall of Sound" technique.
  • Video game creator Yasumi Matsuno, a huge Queen fan, named one of his early video games Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen after two of the songs on this album, which also had a major influence on the story of the game; the Rhyean Sea, a location in the series, is also named after the closing track from this album. (The sequel Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, takes its subtitle from one of the songs on A Day at the Races.)
• Song Style Shift: There are several of them. "The March of the Black Queen" alone probably has about four or five.
• Step Up to the Microphone: Brian makes his Queen lead vocal debut with "Some Day One Day" and Roger sings "The Loser in the End".
• Stop and Go: "Ogre Battle" uses it rather subtly to add some weight to the "He gives a great big cry..." verse. The break is even longer in live performances of the song, with Freddie often stopping to ask the audience "[what they] think of the show so far", a reference to Morecambe and Wise.
• Ur-Example: For Bohemian Parody (as explained above), and possibly for Progressive Metal as well, given the heaviness and theatricality of much of the material. "Ogre Battle" is also sometimes cited as an Ur-Example for Thrash Metal (alongside the next album's "Stone Cold Crazy").
• Villain Song: "The March of the Black Queen" once again qualifies.
• Vocal Range Exceeded: Averted on the album, but discussed in interviews: the principal reason the band never performed "Funny How Love Is" live was to avoid straining Mercury's voice with the demanding high-register vocals throughout the song.
• World of Ham: This may be the hammiest Queen ever got as a band.

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