News of the World

After Queen’s 1975 magnum opus breakthrough A Night at the Opera, the success of its sequel or sister-album, A Day at the Races, was modest in comparison, commercially and critically, but it was a steady fan-pleaser and managed to augment the band’s popularity, keeping their momentum going: they toured relentlessly in enthusiastic support of the album, attracting stadium-sized crowds spanning the globe.

Back in the studio, in 1977, Freddie Mercury and Brian May were keen on consciously concocting blockbuster football-stadium-sized “anthems” to energize and unite their audiences. Brian May’s own words best describe this manifest, for instance as published by Musicaficionado:

That was a response to a particular phase in our career when the audience was becoming a bigger part of the show than we were. They would sing all the songs. And in a place like Birmingham, they’d be so vociferous that we’d have to stop the show and let them sing to us. So both Freddie and I thought it would be an interesting experiment to write songs with audience participation specifically in mind. And my feeling was that everyone can stamp, clap and sing a simple motif. The idea for “We Will Rock You” came from that.

And so together Brian’s “We Will Rock You” and Freddie’s “We Are the Champions” became Queen’s reigning anthems that drove the sales of their blockbuster sixth studio album, News of the World, released October 28, 1977. As an album, it was a sonic departure from their previous work, with its generally louder, but more sparse and/or down-to-earth musical arrangements, more firmly rooted in the rock genre overall.

It went on to become Queen’s most commercially successful album. Upon release the band supported the album with a bigger and glitzier stage-stomping world tour, promptly starting in the U.S., where the album’s popularity grew most, into certified quadruple platinum status, faring comparatively better over-all than in their home territory, the U.K.

Global sales went on to exceed 10 million and counting, as noted by Rolling Stone Magazine:

Upon the release of the album’s forty-year anniversary ultra-deluxe box-set treatment, the publication paid tribute to the album, aptly summarizing the musical state of affairs at the time of its 1977 recording sessions, in its October 2017 article Queen’s ‘News of the World’: 10 Things You Didn’t Know:

To make matters worse, the rise of punk and New Wave was also calling into question the relevance of Seventies arena rock, and Queen suddenly found themselves cast as dinosaurs whose epoch of dominance was rapidly fading. Rather than double down with another lavishly overdubbed studio creation, the band responded by recording the most stripped-down and straightforward album of their career, one which went for a leaner, more spontaneous sound and feel while still retaining the melodic flamboyance and hard-rock heft of their multi-layered earlier work.

And despite, or in spite of, the above “casting” and time-period “relevance”, Queen managed to make their music matter even more, in defiance of harsh rock-press criticism, and perhaps punk rock itself. They simply rocked it out, stadium-stomping style, with even bigger light rigs and smoke machines. To Queen, it was, after all, the fans who mattered most: they were the champions of Queen.