‘The Game’: The Queen album that everyone walked out on
Making a record is always a tense process for any band to do. As much as you want to make sure that every note is something you can be proud of, the idea of anywhere between three to five people agreeing on how a song should sound is bound to be a little bit tough when finalising the track order. While every member of Queen seemed very diplomatic in front of the cameras, they had had enough of each other at some point while making the record The Game.
Compared to the rest of Queen’s catalogue, their introduction into the 1980s actually was a distinct tonal shift for the rest of their career. Featuring pop songs like ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ and ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ certainly wasn’t anything new, but it was strange to see them almost leave their rock roots behind on half of the track listing.
Even though a song like ‘Dragon Attack’ is the kind of fierce rocker one would expect, the band seemed to be more focused on making a radio hit half the time on the album. There had always been a push and pull between the band members, but never before had there been such a clear line in the sand. Brian May was in charge of rock moments, while Freddie Mercury was off chasing pop trends.
Tension can always be the best motivator, and for the most part, The Game holds up as one of their better outings. Is that down solely to the singles? In a way, yes, but for every questionable song like ‘Don’t Try Suicide’, there’s something like ‘Play the Game’ that features the best harmony singing the band has ever done.
That’s not to say that it didn’t come without a fight, either, with May telling Louder, “We all walked out at various times. You get hard times, as in any relationship. We definitely did. Usually in the studio, never on tour…Feeling that you’re not being represented, that you’re not being heard. It was a hard compromise to find, but always worth finding once you did find it”.
For all of the tough decisions in the studio, the people were the ones who were going to decide, and given that ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ became one of the biggest songs of the 1980s, it looked like Queen had found their direction as a pop act. Mercury’s gamble with flirting with dance beats worked, but then he got an awful idea for the next album.
As much as Hot Space had good intentions during its production, half of the album is easily the most dated music Queen ever made. Instead of expanding on their craft, the album feels like the band spent most of their time trying to make lightning strike twice with songs that could more accurately be titled ‘Yet Another One Bites The Dust’.
Still, given the amount of accolades The Game received upon its release, Queen found the perfect middle ground between both ends of their sound. They could rock when they wanted to and they could also deliver those stadium choruses, and given that The Works came out after Hot Space, it seemed that they had learned to keep their commercial side in check.
