A Blog With No Name

The last album of original songs by Queen was in 1995, "Made in Heaven", which Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon created using vocals that Freddie Mercury recorded before his death in 1991.

Last time Queen published new material was in 1997 with "No-one But You (Only The Good Die Young)", a song for Freddie, which was also the last time all the surviving members were together on a project. After that John retired from music, and there were even rumors he sold most of his guitars. Brian said that they still send everything to him, and if he dislikes something, he says so.

Some time later, at an award ceremony, Brian and Rodger met Paul Rodgers and decided to perform together when they receive the awards. There was something in the air, and quickly an idea to tour together arose.
There were discusions about the name, maybe something new, maybe something like "May, Taylor, Rodgers". As fans know, Queen was always defined as all four of them together. But on the other hand, Brian and Roger did put a large part of their lives into it, and the name is well known, so they settled for "Queen + Paul Rodgers", which pretty much defines them.
Being that the tour went great, they started talking of making new material together and "The Cosmos Rocks" was born.

After a lot of listening, I have to say that the album is great.

It's a bit different, but then again you could not expect it to be a new Queen album, it says on the cover "Queen + Paul Rodgers", doesn't it? That said, I think most Queen fans with open minds would like this album. Especially if they like a bit of blues rock too. As the review for "Record Collector" said "it may take some plays to get used to the idea that QPR is very much a meeting of equals."
Brian's guitar is there. Roger's drums are there. Their voices are also there, sweet as ever. That is for the Queen part. And then there is Paul Rodgers' voice. Being that John retired, bass recording on the album was divided to Brian and Paul.

Of course everyone misses Freddie's voice and his great persona, but they are not replacing him (no one could!), they are doing something new, they are a new band, though with strong history.

The Queen-est of all the songs is probably "Say It's Not True". Maybe because Roger leads the vocals, which did happen on a few Queen songs before, so you are on known territory. Maybe because I've heard it before. I believe most fans already have it, since it was a giveaway song for AIDS day last year, and was performed on concerts.

All the song are good, but I won't go through them all - I don't want too much spoilers.
The album starts with a strong rock song "Cosmos Rockin'", which is followed by "Time To Shine", a powerful spirit-lifting song, which says "Raise up your mind/It's time to shine".
"We Believe" is absolutely great - another powerful message of piece and unity.
"Some Things That Glitter" caught my attention at first listen, a nice song with wonderful lyrics. It sounded a bit Hendrixish to me, which is always good

The album ends in a great way, with a very nice outro song. As Brian said in his soapbox, it is an album to be listened from beginning to the end, not just a random number of songs put together.
Overall, as said already - great, I love it.