A Night At The Opera
I am stuck between A Night at the Opera and Jazz as my favorite Queen album. Both have Freddie doing a lot of variety in his vocal work - I particularly like it when he uses his 'rough voice', which he does on both albums.
A Night at the Opera starts out with Death on Two Legs, which may be one of Queen's most ambitious songs, at least in terms of its arrangement. I think it may be as complicated as Bohemian Rhapsode (also on this album), but considerably shorter.
The appeal of both of these Queen albums is that they're very good at doing whatever kind of song they like. Queen was key to the invention of heavy metal, but that didn't stop them from doing songs like Bicycle Race, Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon, etc. If you're looking for a single-genre album, you're out of luck, but if you want to be taken along for an unpredictable ride, this may be a good place to look.
Death on Two Legs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4zmv1IFCOA
0:00 fade in on piano
0:14 Notice the guitar siren sound effects
0:18 The low-tuned guitar riff comes in here
0:25 Notice the fading in guitar harmonies
0:33 And the echoing guitar screach
0:38 An abrupt transition into the main riff of the song.
0:48 Notice how the rhythm guitar and bass play exactly the same thing
1:05 Another abrupt transition - using vocal harmonies
1:06 Notice how the vocals are recorded on two tracks - this is to allow Freddie Mercury to hold the last word of each line of the verse into the first word of the next line.
1:47 No real beat here - just drum fills.
2:06 Did Roger forget to do a fill here? He keeps the beat from the previous section.
2:22 Notice how up-front in the mix the guitar solo is here.
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