The Cosmos Rocks

I enjoy the album from start to finish, though there are some clunkers – namely Voodoo and Through the Night – but it also was released during a very precarious time in my life, so I often associate listening to the album with long road trips to see friends, the headlights of the cars on the turnpike zooming by as I drive into the autumn sunset, Time to Shine blasting as I drum the shit out of my steering wheel... good times...

I'd even say they didn't put enough of a Queen stamp on the material, for my liking anyway.

A couple of tracks are OK, but as others have said it's a parallel project, not a Queen album.

In fact, with PR singing they're more like Smile again....

Funny - I've been listening to the album a lot recently too. I enjoyed it when it came out and still enjoy it now.

It sounds exactly what you'd expect from a Brian, Roger and Paul collaboration at the time. As mentioned above, it's not a typically sounding Queen album, but it still has some of the elements that made Queen who they were and there's a bit of that classic May/Taylor sprinkled in there.

My favourite tracks:

Cosmos Rockin'
Small
Call Me
C-lebrity
Say It's Not True
Small Reprise

In fact, I also like the rest too, tbh. The only tracks I'm not a huge fan of are Voodoo or Through The Night, but I don't think they are bad. I also love the Runaway cover and wish they had managed to get Take Love to work into the studio as well as that was a fun song live.

I was reading over some of the old Queenzone posts about the album (before the discussion would fall into name calling and disarray), and mostly the negatives coming in the form us were the following:

- It's not Queen, haven't listened to it
- The lyrics and music are bad
- Brian and Roger should have made an album instead
- It's not Queen
- Brian phoned it in (or he was simply distracted by his life outside the studio)
- It's not Queen
- Crap artwork

Everyone is entitled to the opinion, for sure. That's what's great about fan forums!

For the people who haven't listened to it because it's not Queen and it's not Freddie, I'd only say this: give it a shot. Listen to it with an open mind and see what you like about it (even if it's nothing).

I think if Brian and Roger had went away and made a 'duet' type album under the Queen banner during this time period, I'd expect the end results to be similar to what the album brought us. They really do/did miss Freddie in the studio, especially when it comes to tweaking lyrics and the tinkering around with each other's songs. I would agree that some of the lyrics on the album are 'meh' but I've come to expect that with the solo works of Brian and Roger.

For Brian's participation, I'm not a guitarist or guitar enthusiast, but I didn't feel like Brian had phoned in his work or effort or that there is sloppy playing. I think it represents the style the album was created with, IMO.

I look at some of the tracks and feel like some of the songs like "Small" (and the reprise), "Say It's Not True" and "Call Me" are great and would happily sit along other tracks on a Queen album during the original lineup years. In fact, Small is one of my all-time favourite Queen and/or Queen related tracks.

I will agree that I'm not a fan of the artwork, though. lol.

Finally, I agree with Roger's sentiment below (taken from Wikipedia). The album was doomed (promotion-wise) before it was even released:

"It had some great stuff on it," Taylor recalled. "I just think that Paul's more blues and soul – one of our favourite singers, ever, but, when it boils down to it, he wasn't the perfect frontman for us. I felt the album was badly promoted by EMI, who were falling to bits at the time. We were on tour in Europe, and I went into record stores and we weren't in them. And I remember being furious, thinking, 'Why did we make this f***king record?'"


... and that's my 2 cents.

I think some of the hooks that make a great queen or solo record were sparse or absent, I also like Say It's Not True, but wish Roger had done the full vocal - Paul oversings, Brian undersings

I agree – I wish Roger and Brian had at least one song they sang themselves. Would’ve made it feel at least a bit more like Queen.

Be ready to throw stones at me:

"Pure rubbish that shouldn´t have been released."

I prefer Hot space or even Flash to this. I´m afraid i´m one of those who thinks that Queen records finished in 1995.

I really like all 6 of Roger's songs. Maybe the album should have just been a Roger EP?

Regarding the remaining 8 songs. I only like Call Me. I feel that it is a fun mindless accoustic song, with some excellent guitar orchestration by Brian.

Call Me is a great feel-good song!

Yeah. That cover was shite.

Yeah, it’s so good. I wonder if there’s any other cover songs they did. It’s just so energized and free flowing. Definitely had fun doing that.