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Queen + Paul Rodgers - Cosmos Rocks
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| In the decade before strong>Freddie Mercury’s death, Queen were well into their bonkers phase, with a string of quirky, eccentric singles (such as “I’m Going Slightly Mad” and “Innuendo”) that took them beyond self-parody and into the realms of surrealist pantomime rock. This ill-fitting rebirth, fronted by the defiantly ungay, unIndian and uneccentric Paul Rodgers, can be seen as an attempt to ditch the Mercury-inspired absurdity and bolster Queen’s hard 'rawkin’credentials....full text |
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| Guardian |
| The news that Brian May and Roger Taylor were to record an album as Queen, with Free and Bad Company's Paul Rodgers on vocals, was met with consternation. What harm, it was asked, might such a venture wreak on Queen's artistic legacy? But, really, what damage is there left to do? Unfairly critically reviled in their heyday - their wit and willingness to take outrageous risks overlooked, their ability to craft perfect pop singles and slip easily between genres ignored - Queen's oeuvre had just been favourably reassessed when the former members unleashed We Will Rock You, a musical that bent over backwards to suggest that the 70s rock hacks might have been right all along: here was a band uninterested in anything other than commercial success. It wasn't just the awfulness of the show itself. It was the crushing effrontery: a Queen musical about how appalling manufactured boybands were, that opened shortly after Queen's surviving members collaborated on a version of its title song with a manufactured boyband, Five, and that celebrated Freddie Mercury's 60th birthday by bringing onstage another manufactured boyband, McFly, to perform Don't Stop Me Now. Whatever The Cosmos Rocks sounds like, it can't conceivably be worse than that....full text |
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| Allmusic |
| Give Queen -- or Brian May and Roger Taylor, as that's who's left at this point -- and new singer Paul Rodgers this much credit: this awkward marriage of convenience winds up being more convincing on the 2008 studio effort The Cosmos Rocks than it did on the live album. Of course, this is almost entirely due to the fact that the songs here were written by and for Rodgers, a frontman who is a cosmos away from Freddie Mercury and never quite seemed comfortable taming Freddie's flamboyancy. Here, Rodgers effectively rules the roost, helping steer The Cosmos Rocks far, far away from the meticulous, grandiose sonic sculptures of Queen at the height of their reign and toward a humble boogie. At its best, this can sound a bit like a second-rate Bad Company, at its worst it feels like Free -- not quite like Queen, but not necessarily unenjoyable either, thanks in part to a Brian May who seems, frankly, thrilled to play new songs again. That none of these songs are good -- hell, some of them are frankly embarrassing, especially when Rodgers channels his inner David St. Hubbins to sing "The cosmos is rocking with the majestic power of rock" -- is almost beside the point. This is all clichés -- glittering gold, rock & roll and school's out -- but the band seems happy to shuffle the pieces and put them together in a slightly different order, to get whatever meager charge there is by following a 20-degree curve instead of a 15-degree one. There are hints of the old craziness -- thank the stars for "C-Lebrity," a monumentally silly satire of TMZ married to the only outsized arrangement here, but "Call Me" also comes close to capturing the bright pop of The Game -- but this is firmly Rodgers' show; it's all meat and potatoes, not champagne and caviar. And, truth be told, it's not all that bad. Certainly, it's not the embarrassment of the live album, but it has its own internal logic that keeps it humming along, and that's good enough for a listen and to get the band out on tour again, even it's not good enough for a second spin....full text |
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