Queen Forever
| Queen Forever | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
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| Compilation album by Queen | ||||
| Released | 10 November 2014 | |||
| Recorded | 1973–2014 | |||
| Genre | Rock | |||
| Length |
75:03 (Standard Edition) 63:03 (Deluxe Edition Disc 1) 71:41 (Deluxe Edition Disc 2) 134:44 (Deluxe Edition Total) |
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| Label |
Hollywood (North America) Virgin EMI (U.K.) |
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| Producer | Queen, William Orbit | |||
| Queen chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Aggregate scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | 49/100 |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |    |
| Classic Rock (de) | 8/10 |
| Daily Mail | |
| The Daily Telegraph | |
| Drowned in Sound | 5/10 |
| The Guardian | |
| Rolling Stone (DE) | |
| State | |
Queen Forever is a compilation album by the British rock band Queen. Released on 10 November 2014, it features tracks the band had "forgotten about" with vocals from original lead singer Freddie Mercury. Original bass guitarist John Deacon is also on the tracks.
Drummer Roger Taylor spoke about the album in December 2013, stating that he and guitarist Brian May were "getting together...in the new year to finish what we've got there and then we're going to fashion some kind of album". May announced the title as a compilation album in a radio interview on BBC Radio Wales on 23 May 2014 at the Hay Festival. It is the first Queen album to feature unreleased material from Mercury (who died from complications related to AIDS in November 1991) since the 1995 album Made in Heaven and Deacon (who retired from the music business in 1997) since the 1997 compilation album Queen Rocks. The album was released by Hollywood Records on 10 November 2014.
Brian May has said that most of the material "comes from the 80's when we were in full flight. It is quite emotional. It is the big, big ballads and the big, big epic sound." He has also stated that it is similar to Made in Heaven. May had earlier stated that the album may end up being a mixture of old existing material and new material containing at least three unreleased songs, later stating possibly as many as five. The material has been fleshed out with modern technology by May.
Originating from sessions for the band's 1984 album The Works, "Let Me In Your Heart Again" was written by May and originally recorded in Los Angeles in 1983. Speaking on the Chris Evans Breakfast Show in September 2014, May revealed that the band had initially found it impossible to complete the track, and that several different versions of the lyrics were written to make it easier for Mercury to sing. They abandoned the song, but it was eventually recorded by May's wife Anita Dobson (with May on guitar) and released on her 1988 studio album Talking of Love (Dobson reportedly used the Queen version(s) as a guide vocal). In preparing the track for Queen Forever, May stitched together parts from each of the existing Queen versions, before he and Taylor fleshed out the music track. Consequently, the final studio version contains very different lyrics from the Dobson version.
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