Released for the first time on vinyl, Queen’s compilation The Platinum Collection, featuring all three of their Greatest Hits albums, shows their unrivalled track record of chart-topping, award-winning, record-breaking rock and pop classics. With four songwriters in the band – Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon – Queen created a glorious legacy of all-time anthems that still ring out across the ages. For past and future fans alike, they will rock you! First released in 1981, Greatest Hits is the best-selling album of all time in the UK having sold over 6.8 million copies, with global sales in excess of 25 million. Spanning Queen’s triumphant first act, from 1974 to 1980, Greatest Hits includes some of the world’s most beloved rock standards, including the stadium-sized symphonic chart-topper Bohemian Rhapsody and the roof-raising We Are The Champions, which was named the most catchy song of all time by a team of scientists in 2011. But this album also dazzles with its stylistically promiscuous range, from the crowd rousing We Will Rock You, the tongue in cheek Fat Bottomed Girls, the stomp-stomp-stomp late 70’s disco inspired Another One Bites the Dust, to the finger-snapping jukebox retro-rock homage Crazy Little Thing Called Love and the soaring, impassioned, gospel-fired Aretha-isms of Somebody To Love. Originally released shortly before Freddie Mercury’s death in 1991, Greatest Hits II has sold over 19 million copies worldwide. It spans 1981 to 1991, the period which followed Queen having dropped their famous no synthesizers rule elevating them to new heights of creativity. Opening up their guitar-heavy sound to embrace funk, disco and electronics resulted in rich rewards, transforming these former Seventies glam rockers into a glossy, streamlined, emphatically contemporary super-group. Rebooted and rewired, Queen produced some of their most immortal hits during this imperial Eighties phase. Built around an improvised studio jam, their infectious David Bowie collaboration Under Pressure became a global chart-topping smash. The retro-futurist epic Radio Gaga and the humorously romantic I Want To Break Free stand as testaments to their early mastery of synthesizers, while the muscular ripcord riffs of Hammer To Fall and octave-vaulting grand-piano acrobatics of It’s a Hard Life are vintage Queen both sonically and lyrically. Greatest Hits II, officially the tenth best selling album of all time in the UK, is steeped in warmth and optimism, from the tender sentiments and sumptuous harmonies of Friends Will Be Friends to the planet-sized synth-rock fanfares of One Vision, a Live Aid-inspired hymn to humankind’s better angels. Mercury even chronicles his failing health with stoic humour, notably on the heroically defiant swan song The Show Must Go On, not going gently into that good night but still burning bright, and still playing shamelessly to the gallery. Greatest Hits III, rarely available on vinyl, features their latter-day songs, the band members’ solo hits and the band’s collaborations with other artists including Elton John and Montserrat Caballe. Undimmed by time or fashion, The Platinum Collection is a reminder that Queen were always colourful, always dynamic, always ablaze with passion and pride.
