Greatest Hits II (Queen-Album)
Occupation
- Freddie Mercury - vocals, piano
- Brian May - guitars, vocals
- Roger Taylor - drums, percussion, vocals
- John Deacon - Bass
Guest musicians:
- Fred Mandel - synthesizers on Radio Ga Ga; I Want to Break Free; Hammer to Fall
- David Bowie - vocals on Under Pressure
- Steve Howe - ( Innuendo )
- Michael Kamen - ( Who Wants to Live Forever )
- National Philharmonic Orchestra - Orchestra on Who Wants to Live Forever
Greatest Hits II is the 1991 published, third compilation album by British rock band Queen.
The album
As a continuation of Greatest Hits Greatest Hits II Queen contains singles that have appeared 1981-1991. Of the like in the first compilation of 17 pieces submitted four songs from the albums The Works (1984 ), A Kind of Magic (1986 ), The Miracle (1989) and Innuendo (1991). The album Hot Space (1982 ) is represented by only a single release since Body Language and Las Palabras de Amor were not considered. In parallel with the release of Greatest Hits II, the piece contained on this compilation The Show Must Go On was released as a single.
Greatest Hits II Greatest Hits and one next to Made in Heaven Queens world's best-selling albums. It was number one on the charts, inter alia, in Argentina, Brazil, France, Great Britain, Italy, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland and Spain. In Britain, Greatest Hits II is located in the ranking of best-selling albums in total in seventh place; for over 3.6 million copies sold the album went eight times platinum status. The first place in this list is the British Queen's first Greatest Hits edition.
Less than four weeks after the release of the album Queen singer Freddie Mercury died of complications from AIDS disease.
Greatest Hits II was later released along with the two other hits compilations of Queen as box sets: Greatest Hits I & II was released in 1994, The Platinum Collection in 2000 In 2011, the box set and separately the three individual albums it as a digitally remastered version. published.
A special position is occupied the United States. Hollywood Records in 1991, had the entire Queen catalog brought out a new CD; Greatest Hits II was not published. Instead, appeared in 1992 as equivalent a compilation under the title Classic Queen, which is based on Greatest Hits II in terms of design and songs compilation, but also contains some older pieces from the seventies.
The cover design of both albums by Richard Gray. The accompanying text in the booklet to the individual pieces wrote Jim Jenkins; Jacky Gunn wrote some additional lyrics for the CD Classic Queen.
Title list
Numerous titles have been shortened to CD Edition. ( "Tracks edited by David Richards for CD. " ) In addition to several cuts of a few seconds were in Titles I Want It All, Who Wants To Live Forever, Hammer To Fall and One Vision complete passages removed, partially single versions were used. The largest cut was made at One Vision, where in comparison to the studio version in the intro and outro total of 1:09 minutes have been removed.
Chart positions
In the charts Greatest Hits II reached the following placements:
- # 1 - Argentina (Diamond ) / Brazil (2x Platinum) / Denmark / Finland (5x platinum ) / France ( diamond) / UK (8x Platinum ) / Italy (5x Platinum) / New Zealand / Netherlands (5x Platinum) / Austria (4x platinum) / Portugal / Switzerland (5x platinum ) / Spain (5x platinum) / Hungary
- # 2 - Germany (4x Platinum ) / Sweden
- # 4 - Norway
CD " Classic Queen " (USA)
Queens American Label Hollywood Records released Greatest Hits II held a few months later, a similar compilation, entitled Classic Queen. This CD ( with a running time of 74:11 minutes) appeared in March 1992 and contains the following titles:
The non-labeled remix in the booklet version of Under Pressure and the shortened versions of The Miracle and One Vision were released exclusively on this album.
Classic Queen was in the U.S. is by far the most commercially successful Queen album since the release of the first greatest hits compilation in 1981. It reached No. 1 in the Canadian Charts (5x platinum) and in the U.S. charts Rank 4 (3x platinum).