Hot space

Hot space
Studio album by Queen
Publication (s)	April 5th 1982
Label (s)	EMI / Parlophone ; Elektra , Hollywood Records (USA)
Format (s)	LP , MC , CD
Genre (s)	Rock , funk , disco
Title (number)	11
running time	43:29
occupation	John Deacon - bass guitar , guitar , keyboards Brian May - guitars, vocals , piano , keyboards Freddie Mercury - vocals, piano, keyboards Roger Taylor - drums , vocals, guitar, keyboards Guest musicians: David Bowie : Singing in Under Pressure
production	Queen and Mack
Studio (s)	Mountain Studios (Montreux) Musicland Studios (Munich)
chronology Greatest Hits (1981) Hot space The Works (1984)

Hot Space is the tenth studio album by the British rock group Queen . It was released in April 1982 and differs from other Queen albums by the influence of disco and funk music. The album was recorded between June 1981 and March 1982 in Munich and Montreux .

Track list

LP side 1:

1. Staying Power (Mercury) - 4:12 *
2. Dancer (May) - 3:50
3. Back Chat (Deacon) - 4:35 *
4. Body Language (Mercury) - 4:32 *
5. Action This Day (Taylor) - 3:32

LP side 2:

1. Put Out the Fire (May) - 3:19
2. Life Is Real [Song for Lennon] (Mercury) - 3:32
3. Calling All Girls (Taylor) - 3:51 *
4. Las Palabras de Amor (The Words of Love) (May) - 4:31 *
5. Cool Cat (Deacon / Mercury) - 3:29
6. Under Pressure (Queen / Bowie, 1981) - 4:04 *

* Singles

The title Soul Brother (Queen) was released in 1981 as the B-side of the single Under Pressure .

The lead vocals in Action This Day are shared by Mercury and Taylor. The producers of the album are Queen and Mack ; Under Pressure was produced by Queen and David Bowie.

Details of each song

Staying power

Arif Mardin, the Turkish music producer living in the USA, arranged and produced the wind recordings for Staying Power . On Queen's original rough version of the piece by Freddie Mercury, this part was recorded with the electric guitar.

In the harder live interpretation of Staying Power , John Deacon did not play bass as usual, but rhythm guitar ; so, as an exception, at Queen concerts a second, additional guitar could be heard alongside Brian May's Red Special .

Dancer

The title words of the album can be found in Dancer with “hot space”. In addition, Dancer next Backschat ( "thanks") contains the only Queen song that German text: The wake-up call - Sample ( "Good morning, you are awakened wanted") was in a hotel while Queens Musicland sessions in Munich been recorded. Title author Brian May played the synthesizer bass.

Cover of the single "Back Chat"

Back chat

John Deacon's Funk- influenced track Back Chat is Queen's first track to feature a longer, alternative "Extended Version" on a 12 "/ maxi single . Both this 12 ″ and the single remix differ significantly from the album version. The rhythm guitar that can be heard in Back Chat was played by Deacon, the distinctive guitar solo is by May.

Body Language

Characteristic of the disco-oriented Body Language are the extremely economical arrangement, the keyboard bass played by Freddie Mercury and - in contrast to all of the band's other singles - the almost complete lack of guitar. Body Language , composed by Mercury, is one of Queen's most atypical and most controversially discussed singles. The video for the song comes from Mike Hodges , the director of the film Flash Gordon , for which Queen recorded the soundtrack in 1980.

The new CD of Hot Space , released by Hollywood Records in the USA in 1991, contains a bonus track, a version of Body Language remixed by Susan Rogers .

Action This Day

The title of Taylor's song refers to the words of the same name that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill used to identify urgent documents.

Put out the fire

Brian May's Put Out the Fire is - like Las Palabras de Amor , also from his pen - one of the more traditional Queen pieces on the album. It is also the only track on the album that is featured on the 1997 compilation Queen Rocks .

Life is real

Written by Freddie Mercury, this song pays homage to John Lennon , the Beatles' rhythm guitarist and singer , who was shot dead in December 1980.

Cover of the single "Calling All Girls"

Calling all girls

With Calling All Girls a song composed by Roger Taylor was released as a single (in North America) for the first time. The video clip is based on George Lucas ' science fiction film THX 1138 from 1971. All videos of the singles extracted from Hot Space are included on the Queen DVD Greatest Videos Hits 2 , released in 2003 .

Las palabras de amor

Parts of this piece are sung in Spanish ; Las palabras de amor (The Words of Love) was inspired by Queen's open air performances in Latin America in 1981. The video for the single shows the band's third appearance on the British music show Top of the Pops - after Seven Seas of Rhye and Killer Queen in 1974 . The only live interpretation of the song by the band took place - in a threesome - in 1992 at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert with guest singer Zucchero .

Cool cat

Freddie Mercury sang the title written by him and John Deacon in falsetto . The original version, which also includes the voice of David Bowie, has not yet been officially released and can only be found on bootlegs.

Under pressure

→ Main article : Under Pressure (song)

Queen's song with David Bowie was created during a jam session in Montreux . Bowie also recorded many of his albums in the Mountain Studios there , which was then owned by Queen. Under Pressure's trademark is John Deacon's well-known bass line . The rapper Vanilla Ice used a sample of it for his 1990 single Ice Ice Baby, which was released and sold millions of times .

A remix of the track ("Rah Mix"), partly newly recorded by Queen, was released in 1999 on the compilation Greatest Hits III and as a single.

The song is about how love can help make life under high pressure more bearable.

Soul Brother

Soul Brother was released in 1981 as the b-side of the single Under Pressure . The author's name is "Queen". The text contains references to numerous other pieces by the band: "Sure he's got style" ( Bring Back That Leroy Brown ), "he's my best friend" ( You're My Best Friend ) , "he's my champion" ( We Are the Champions ) , "he will rock you rock you rock you" ( We Will Rock You ) , "he's the savior of the universe" ( Flash ) , "he can make you keep yourself alive" ( Keep Yourself Alive ) , "' cause he's somebody somebody you can love " ( Somebody to Love ) ," when you're under pressure feeling under pressure " (Under Pressure) .

Unpublished pieces

• Feel Like is a demo that was created during the Hot Space sessions . The title can be seen as an early version of Under Pressure , although the famous bass line is missing and the lyrics are partly completely different.

Reviews in the media

Single Body Language :

• Sounds (Great Britain), 1982: "Good, electronically pulsed cooled-out slick 133 bpm 7in white disco smash."

Hot Space album :

• Record Mirror (Great Britain), 1982: “New styles, and a whole new sense of values. You'll love Hot Space, eventually. "

• Sounds (Great Britain), 1982: "Queen have never made particularly blinding albums, but you'll have to agree that Hot Space shows more restraint and imagination than tripe like Jazz ."

• NME (Great Britain), 1982: "The production of the whole album is really a peach."

• The Washington Post (USA), 1982: "'Hot Space' is Queen's most mature work to date, featuring what fellow rocker Rick Derringer was moved to call 'a normal Queen side and a Queen-gets-weird side.' […] There's one of the year's best Lennon tributes ('Life is Real') […]. "

• Rolling Stone (USA), 1982, by John Milward: “'Back Chat' is a hot rock-funk tune, with guitar tracks as slick as an icy dance floor. An elastic beat puts some spring into a fine rocker, 'Calling All Girls,' while Freddie Mercury's Mick Jagger -like falsetto on 'Cool Cat' takes the band as close to a street corner as it'll ever get. […] ' Under Pressure, 'a number on which Mercury manages to ape both Hall and Oates , while making Bowie sound positively soulful. The rest of Hot Space is, at best, routinely competent and, at times, downright offensive. 'Give me your body / Don't talk,' sings Mercury in 'Body Language,' a piece of funk that isn't fun. For unsurpassed solipsism , however, he offers 'Life Is Real (Song for Lennon)': 'Torsos in my closet / Shadows from my past / Life is real.' As Mercury slips into a breathless, Plastic Ono -sounding 'real,' one is grateful that soul is still something money can't buy. "

• Stylus Magazine (USA), 2004, by Anthony Miccio: “While it sunk commercially (at least in the states), I'd argue that artistically it ranks amongst their highest achievements. […] The new look was so inspiring that he [Mercury; Note] was offering five cent rides to everyone in earshot; side one of Hot Space is the closest he ever got to being a true disco diva. [...] 'Dancer' is recommended to any Led Zeppelin fan who wonders where the band would have gone after In Through The Out Door . […] 'Back Chat' […] is made brilliant by Mercury's slathering anguish (note all the sounds he makes between the lyrics) and the swanky snap of the music […]. […] 'Body Language', which did actually make the US top 20, despite consisting merely of a loping shuffle, some spacey keyboards and Freddie screaming 'GIVE ME YOUR BODY! SEXY BOD-AY! ' It's lots of fun […]. […] Unfortunately, side two is the usual pompous if intermittently rewarding Queen material fans should be used to. […] Even if they hadn't included that opus [Under Pressure; Note] , Hot Space, so poorly represented in their numerous compilations, would remain one of the few Queen full-lengths that merit purchase. "

Chart placements

album

year	title	Top ranking, total weeks / months, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks / months, awards, notes)					Remarks
		DE	AT	CH	UK	US
1982	Hot space	DE5 (21 weeks) DE	AT1 (3 months) AT	-	UK4 (19 weeks) UK	US22 (21 weeks) US	First published: April 5, 1982 Sales: + 725,000

gray hatching : no chart data available for this year

Singles

year	Title album	Top ranking, total weeks / months, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, album , rankings, weeks / months, awards, notes)					Remarks
		DE	AT	CH	UK	US
1981	Under pressure hot space	DE21 (18 weeks) DE	AT10 (2½ months) AT	CH10 (5 weeks) CH	UK1 (11 weeks) UK	US29 (15 weeks) US	First published: Oct 26, 1981 Sales: + 2,695,000; with David Bowie
1982	Body Language Hot Space	DE27 (13 weeks) DE	AT11 (1½ month) AT	-	UK25 (6 weeks) UK	US11 (14 weeks) US	First published: April 19, 1982
	Las palabras de amor (The Words of Love) Hot Space	DE68 (4 weeks) DE	-	CH13 (2 weeks) CH	UK17 (8 weeks) UK	-	First published: June 1, 1982
	Calling All Girls Hot Space	-	-	-	-	US60 (6 weeks) US	First published: July 1982 published in North America only
	Staying Power Hot Space	-	-	-	-	-	First published: July 31, 1982 published in Japan only
	Back Chat Hot Space	DE69 (3 weeks) DE	-	-	UK40 (4 weeks) UK	-	First published: August 9, 1982

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Release and chart data
2. ^ The Churchill Center: Action This Day - A Daily Chronicle of Churchill's Life ( Memento of February 7, 2009 in the Internet Archive ); and Paul Addison: From Churchill: The Unexpected Hero. Oxford University Press, 2005 (quoted in RALPH ).
3. ↑ SWR 3 Daily Pop: November 28, 1981 - Successful collaboration between Queen and David Bowie ( Memento from November 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) .
4. ↑ ^{a b c d} cit. N. Jacky Gunn, Jim Jenkins: Queen. As It Began. Sidgwick & Jackson, London 1992, pp. 150-156. ISBN 0-283-06052-2
5. ↑ A Glorious Queen. In: The Washington Post , July 23, 1982. (See Queen Archives ( October 5, 2007 memento on the Internet Archive ))
6. ↑ Anthony Miccio: On Second Thought: Queen - Hot Space . In: Stylus , November 23, 2004.
7. ↑ Chart sources: DE AT CH UK US

Web links

• Queen after 11 years - Steve Gett talking to Brian May (queen.musichall.cz) - Interview with Brian May from 1982 (English)