Queen The final albums and Mercury's death (1990–1997)
 Our albums just tend to be collections of songs really, because we all write in the group, all four of us. ”
—John Deacon
Because of medical complications, May was absent when the band started work on their third album, Sheer Heart Attack, released in 1974. Considered by many fans as the band's first true classic, the album reached number two in the United Kingdom, sold well throughout Europe, and went gold in the United States. It gave the band their first real taste of commercial success. The album experimented with a wide variety of musical genres, including British Music Hall (Killer Queen), heavy metal (Flick of the Wrist, Brighton Rock, Tenement Funster, Now I'm Here, and Stone Cold Crazy – a song which Metallica would later cover and earn a Grammy for), ballads (Lily Of The Valley and Dear Friends), ragtime (Bring Back That Leroy Brown) and Caribbean (Misfire). At this point Queen started to move away from the progressive tendencies of their first two releases into a more radio-friendly, song-oriented style. Sheer Heart Attack introduced new sound and melody patterns that would be refined on their next album A Night at the Opera.
The single Killer Queen reached number two on the British charts, and became their first U.S. hit, reaching number twelve in the Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits. It combines camp, vaudeville, British music hall with May's guitar virtuosity. The album's second single, Now I'm Here, a more traditional hard rock composition, was a number eleven hit in Britain.
In 1975, the band left for a world tour with each member clad resplendently in Zandra Rhodes-created costumes and banks of lights and effects. They toured the US, headlining for the first time, and played in Canada for the first time in April with supporting act Kansas. Also at this time, the band's manager Jim Beach negotiated the band out of their Trident contract, leaving the band without a manager.[clarify] They had a number of options, one of which was Led Zeppelin's manager, Peter Grant. Grant wanted them to sign with Led Zeppelin's own production company, Swan Song Records. This was unacceptable to Queen, so instead they contacted Elton John's manager, John Reid, who accepted the position.[citation needed] In April 1975 the band toured Japan for the first time, causing a nationwide hysteria.
Later that year the band recorded and released A Night at the Opera. At the time, it was the most expensive album ever produced. Like its predecessor, the album features diverse musical styles and experimentation with stereo sound. In The Prophet's Song, an eight-minute epic, the middle section is a canon, with simple phrases layered to create a full-choral sound. The album was very successful in Britain, and went triple platinum in the United States.. It is considered their magnum opus; in 2003, it was ranked number 230 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
The album also featured the hit single Bohemian Rhapsody, which was number one in the United Kingdom for nine weeks, and is Britain's third-best-selling single of all time; it also reached number nine in the United States (a 1992 re-release reached number two). Bohemian Rhapsody has been voted, several times, the greatest song of all time. The second single from the album, You're My Best Friend, peaked at sixteen in the United States and went on to become a worldwide Top Ten hit.[citation needed]
By 1976, Queen were back in the studio, where they recorded A Day at the Races, what may be mistaken simply as a companion album to A Night at the Opera. It again borrowed the name of a Marx Brothers' movie, and its cover was similar to that of A Night at the Opera, a variation on the same Queen Crest. Musically, the album was by both fans' and critics' standards a strong effort, and reached number one on the British charts. The major hit on the album was Somebody to Love, a gospel-inspired song in which Mercury, May, and Taylor multi-tracked their voices to make a 100-voice gospel choir. The song went to number two in the United Kingdom, and number thirteen on the U.S. singles chart.. The album also featured one of the band's heaviest songs, Brian May's Tie Your Mother Down, which became a staple of their live shows.[citation needed]
Also in 1976, Queen played one of their most famous gigs, a 1976 concert in Hyde Park, London. It set an attendance record, with 150,000 people confirmed in the audience. Some put the number closer to 180,000, and is usually reported between 150,000 and 200,000.
News of the World was released a year later; although it was critically panned at the time, it has since gained recognition as one of the stand-out hard rock albums of the late 1970s, as well as a significant influence in creating stadium rock. It contained many songs tailor-made for live performance, including We Will Rock You and the rock ballad We Are the Champions, both of which reached number four in the United States and became enduring international sports anthems. Deacon also wrote his first Hard Rock song Spread Your Wings, for News of the World unlike in previous three albums, where he wrote pop songs. Roger Taylor released his first solo effort in 1976 in the form of a single: the A-side was a cover of a song by The Parliaments I Wanna Testify, and the B-side was a song by Taylor called Turn On The TV.
Freddie Mercury during a concert in Hannover in 1979In 1978 the band released Jazz, including the hit singles Fat Bottomed Girls and Bicycle Race, which were also released as a double-A-side single. The word jazz was not used in a strict sense, and the album was noted by critics for its collection of different styles, jazz not being one of them.[citation needed] Rolling Stone criticized it for being dull, saying Queen hasn't the imagination to play jazz – Queen hasn't the imagination, for that matter, to play rock & roll. The album cover was inspired by a painting on the Berlin Wall.[citation needed] Important tracks of the album include Dead on Time, Don't Stop Me Now, Let Me Entertain You, and Mustapha, in which Arabesque music is combined with heavy rock guitar.
The band's first live album, Live Killers, was released in 1979; it went platinum twice in the United States. They also released the very successful single Crazy Little Thing Called Love, a rockabilly song done in the style of Elvis Presley. The song made the top 10 in many countries, and was the band's first number one single in the United States.
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