This is going to take a little explaining. In 1981, when it was contracted to
Elektra Records
in the U.S.,
Queen
released an album called
Greatest Hits
(
Elektra
564), which contained 14 songs that chronicled singles from 1973 to 1981. In 1990,
Hollywood Records
acquired CD rights to
's catalog, by which time the
had gone out of print on vinyl.
Hollywood
released
Classic Queen
, a compilation that covered
's hits from 1982 to its demise in 1991, with a few older songs thrown in. Then it released this album, its version of
, which is a 17-track album that deletes the songs from the first
that appeared on
(among them
's biggest hit,
"Bohemian Rhapsody"
) and adds a few tracks from the 1973-1982 era that did not appear on the original release. The
LP had a superior selection, but it's gone now, so you're stuck with this. (New fans don't seem to have minded, as this new
sold better than the first one.) ~ William Ruhlmann