Radio Program: An Overview of Taiwanese Popular Music History

As I mentioned a couple of months ago, I'm now doing a radio show on Taiwanese popular music every other week on the radio station News98 (98.1) in Taiwan. For the lunar new year holiday, I was asked to a few extra shows, and I decided to use them as an opportunity to play a sampling of Taiwanese pop songs from throughout the 20th century. I don't think the shows turned out as well as they could have, for a number of reasons. For one thing, the scheduling of the broadcasts was still in flux when I left for my vacation, so many listeners may not have found it easy to hear all of the shows. An even bigger problem was that after the shows had been recorded but before they were broadcast, the station (along with all other stations in Taiwan) received a notification that a large bunch of songs had copyright issues, including quite a few that I had included. These songs all had to be cut out of the shows before they were broadcast. As a result, what people heard fell well short of what I had intended. So I am posting here not only all the songs that were broadcast but also those that were originally included but cut later, and even a few others that I had to cut at the time of recording due to length. They are roughly chronologically divided into three groups, covering the era of Japanese rule and the immediate post war period, followed by the 1960s and 1970s, and finally the 1980s and 1990s. Needless to say, there are plenty of songs from all these eras that are as good as those found here, as this was just intended as an overview. Note that I haven't included links for the songs this time. Most of them can be found on Youtube and other websites just by pasting in the titles, though particularly for the older songs the versions available on line are in most cases likely to be later covers.

台灣流行音樂簡史

I
桃花泣血記〈詞：詹天馬 曲：王雲峰〉 純純[劉清香] (1932)
一個紅蛋〈詞：李臨秋 曲：鄧雨賢〉 純純 (1933)
街頭的流浪[失業兄弟]〈詞：守真 曲：周玉當〉 青春美 (1934/12)
心酸酸〈詞：陳達儒 曲：姚讚福〉 秀鑾 (1936)
白牡丹〈詞：陳達儒 曲：陳秋霖〉 根根 (1936)
農村曲〈詞：陳達儒 曲：蘇桐〉 青春美 (1937)
四季紅〈詞：李臨秋 曲：鄧雨賢〉 純純、豔豔 (約1938)
青春嶺〈詞：陳達儒 曲：蘇桐〉 王福、秀鑾 (約1939)
誤認君〈詞曲：奧稽文藝部〉 阿冉妹 (1934)
番社の娘/十八姑娘一朵花〈詞：栗原白也 曲：堂崎夜雨[鄧雨賢]〉 佐塚佐和子(1939)/劉韻(1958)
加路蘭港之戀-奈羅灣多也〈詞曲：日高敏倉〉 盧秀花/林成松 (early 1960s [written in early 1940s])
望你早歸〈詞：那卡諾[黃仲鑫] 曲：楊三郎〉 (1946)
補破網〈詞：李臨秋 曲：王雲峰〉 秀芬 (1948)
安平追想曲〈詞：陳達儒 曲：許石〉 美美 (1951-2)
高山青〈詞：鄧禹平 曲：張徹〉 何綺蘭、許自謙 (1950s) [from 阿里山風雲 (1949)]
綠島小夜曲〈詞：潘英傑 曲：周藍萍〉 紫薇 (約1954)
黃昏嶺〈詞：周添旺 曲：三界稔[日本曲]〉 紀露霞 (約1957)
黃昏的故鄉〈詞：愁人[文夏]譯寫 曲：中野忠晴[日本原曲:赤い夕陽の故郷]〉 文夏 (1959)
孤女的願望〈詞：葉俊麟 曲：米山正夫[日本原曲:花笠道中]〉 陳芬蘭 (1959)
舊情綿綿〈詞：葉俊麟 曲：洪一峰〉 洪一峰 (1959-60)
暗淡的月〈詞：葉俊麟 曲：吳晉淮〉 吳晉淮 (1959-60)
台灣好〈詞：羅家倫 曲：山地民謠〉 美黛 (1964 [written in early 1950s])

II
回想曲〈詞：楊正[周藍萍] 曲：周藍萍〉 紫薇 (1961)
意難忘〈詞：慎芝 曲：俊一[佐々木俊一]〉 美黛 (1963) 原曲:東京小夜曲
山地情歌[離別故鄉/馬蘭之戀] 〈詞：黃敏 曲：山地民謠〉 文鶯
送情郎到軍中[阿美三鳳]〈詞曲：曾美愛**〉 玲蘭（曾美愛）/盧靜子 (1965/1967)
墓仔埔也敢去〈詞：郭大誠 曲：吉田正〉 葉啟田 (1965)
水車姑娘〈詞：葉俊麟 曲：米山正夫[日本曲]〉 尤萍[陳淑樺] (1967)
苦酒滿杯〈詞：慎芝 曲：姚讚福〉 謝雷 (1967)
今天不回家〈詞：諸戈[莊奴] 曲：古月[左宏元]〉 姚蘇蓉 (1969)
為何命如此（苦海女神龍）〈詞：黃俊雄 曲：猪俣公章〉 邱蘭芬 (1970)
Whiter Shade of Pale (Brooker/Fisher/Reid/Bach) 雷蒙合唱團 (1970)
我沒有騙你〈詞：莊奴 曲：公羽[翁清溪]〉 包娜娜 (1971)
送君珠淚滴〈詞：徐品榮 曲：周宜新〉 丁黛 (1971)
我的歌〈詞曲：洪小喬〉 洪小喬 (1973)
熱情的沙漠〈詞：李潔心 曲：加瀨邦彥、山上路夫〉 歐陽菲菲 (1974)
江湖上〈詞：余光中 曲：楊弦〉 楊弦 (1975)
我是一片雲〈詞：瓊瑤 曲：古月[左宏元]〉 鳳飛飛 (1977)
姑娘的酒窩〈詞：周燕蘭 曲：岳勳[李基生]〉 高凌風 (1977)
小城故事〈詞：莊奴[黃河] 曲：湯尼[翁清溪]〉 鄧麗君 (1979)
拜訪春天〈詞：林建助 曲：陳輝雄〉 施孝榮 (1981)
無緣〈詞：呂金守 曲：吳盛智〉 吳盛智 (1981)
可憐的落魄人〈詞曲：高飛龍[高子洋]〉 陳明仁 (1981)
心事誰人知〈詞曲：蔡振南〉 沈文程 (1982)

III
鹿港小鎮〈詞曲：羅大佑〉 羅大佑 (1982)
一樣的月光〈詞：吳念真、羅大佑 曲：李壽全〉 蘇芮 (1983)
從現在開始〈詞曲：紅螞蟻〉 紅螞蟻合唱團 (1985)
舞女〈詞曲：俞隆華〉 陳小雲 (1984)
夢田〈詞：三毛[陳平] 曲：翁孝良〉 潘越雲 & 齊豫 (1985)
生命中的精靈〈詞曲：李宗盛〉 李宗盛 (1986)
玫瑰人生〈詞：慎芝 曲：張弘毅〉 許景淳 (1987)
雁渡寒潭〈詞曲：黃舒駿〉 黃舒駿 (1989)
抓狂〈詞：王明輝、陳主惠 曲：Asanee Chotikul〉 黑名單工作室 (1989)
向前走〈詞曲：林強〉 林強 (1990)
打〈詞：林暐哲 曲：林暐哲、李欣芸〉 Baboo (1992)
把悲傷留給自己〈詞曲：陳昇〉 陳昇 (1991)
孤枕難眠〈詞曲：劉志宏〉 周華健 (1993)
用心良苦〈詞：十一郎 曲：張宇〉 張宇 (1993)
自由歌〈詞曲：張雨生〉 張雨生 (1994)
不夠放肆〈詞曲：陳珊妮〉 陳珊妮 (1994)
斷腸詩〈詞曲：伍佰[吳俊霖]〉 伍佰 & China Blue (1998)
原來你什麼都不要〈詞：鄔裕康 曲：郭子〉 張惠妹 (1996)
愛的初體驗〈詞曲：張震嶽〉 張震嶽 (1997)
神話〈詞：林志興，陳光榮譯寫 曲：陳建年〉 Samingad〈紀曉君〉 (1999)
下淡水河寫著我等介族譜〈詞：鐘永豐 曲：林生祥〉 交工樂隊 (1999)
雌雄胴體〈詞曲：阿信．五月天〉 小平／五月天 (1999)
農村出事情〈詞曲：蔡海恩〉 濁水溪公社 (1999)
轉吧、七彩霓虹燈〈詞曲：小應[應蔚民]〉 夾子電動大樂隊 (2000/12)

Twelve Classic David Bowie Songs

Two major rock stars passed away in recent weeks. One was Glenn Frey, who along with Don Henley was one of the leaders and main songwriters of the Eagles. Since I did a brief post on my favorite Eagles songs not that long ago, I won't attempt to do a retrospective on Frey for now. Instead, I'd like to do my own brief (and wholly inadequate) tribute to the even more influential rocker who died not long before Frey: David Bowie. First off, I have to admit that my knowledge of Bowie is much more limited than it should be. For a long time, the only CD of his music I had was a Changesbowie compilation CD. It was only in the last few years that I acquired copies of Hunky Dory and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, and even more recently I was given a copy of 'Hours...', though I've only listened to it once in the brief time I've had it. Of course even aside from what is on the CDs I own, I've heard a few other Bowie songs over the years, and I'm fairly familiar with the basic outline of his career, particularly up to the early 1980s. But while I know bits of trivia about him, such as the fact that his first single, "Liza Jane", was released under the name Davie Jones [Bowie's birth name was David Jones] and the King Bees, or that he was one of the first to attempt to put English lyrics to the French song "Comme d'habitude", later adapted by Paul Anka as "My Way", there's still far too much of Bowie's music that I've never heard, making it impossible for me to do a proper retrospective covering his whole career. Instead, I've just selected ten favorites from the songs I know well. Rather than attempting to rank them, I've just listed them chronologically. If I really had to pick a single song as my favorite Bowie song, "Life on Mars", "Starman" and "Space Oddity" would be my most likely choices, but several others among these might also come out on top. I should also note that I could easily have put a few other songs from Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust in this list, as there are a lot of good ones on those albums, but I decided two songs from each was enough. There's also a good chance that after I've gotten a chance to listen to more of his most recent work I'd want to include at least one song from his last couple of albums. After his death I listened to 2013's "Where Are We Now" and his very last single "Lazarus", both of which struck me as quite good, but I'd prefer to listen to them more than once before I decide how I rank them in comparison to the songs listed here.

Twelve Classic David Bowie Songs

Space Oddity (Bowie) (1969) David Bowie
The Man Who Sold the World (Bowie) (1970) The Man Who Sold the World
Changes (Bowie) (1971) Hunky Dory
Life on Mars (Bowie) (1971) Hunky Dory
Starman (Bowie) (1972) The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
Suffragette City (Bowie) (1972) The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
Rebel Rebel (Bowie) (1974) Diamond Dogs
Young Americans (Bowie) (1975) Young Americans
"Heroes" (Bowie/Eno) (1977) "Heroes"
Ashes to Ashes (Bowie) (1980) Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)
Let's Dance (Bowie) (1983) Let's Dance
Modern Love (Bowie) (1983) Let's Dance

Special Mention:
All the Young Dudes (Bowie) Mott the Hoople (1972)
Under Pressure (Queen/Bowie) Queen & David Bowie (1981)

Still the Greatest: The Essential Songs of the Beatles’ Solo Careers by Andrew Grant Jackson

Still the Greatest: The Essential Songs of the Beatles’ Solo Careers by Andrew Grant Jackson is another book covering a favorite speculative topic of many popular music fans: what would sort of albums might the Beatles have put out if they had stayed together? I have my own series of imaginary Beatles albums compiled from the best of their solo work, and in the past I wrote about another book covering the same ground, Jeff Walker’s Let’s Put the Beatles Back Together. Inevitably, I found myself looking at the differences between Still the Greatest and the latter book, not to mention my own albums. Rather than creating multi-CD box sets as Walker does, Jackson sticks to the standard album format, though with the interesting (though I’d say unnecessary) twist of making them exactly parallel the actual Beatles’ albums, so there is one double album in addition to a dozen single albums. As mentioned in my review of the other book, I think the album format makes a great deal more sense, as the idea that the Beatles would have released all their original material in multi-album sets even in the pre-CD era strikes me as highly unlikely. Another area where I think Jackson’s book is somewhat superior is that his discussions of the individual songs are more balanced length-wise and have less of a tendency to go too far off on tangents only barely related to the music, whereas Walker’s discussions of Lennon’s songs are a lot longer than those about the others’ material and tend to dwell a little too much on gossipy details about Lennon’s life (though much of it is admittedly interesting). Jackson also includes an appendix listing all of the actual solo albums released by the ex-Beatles, including the songs from each that he has put on his Beatles albums. He even compares the albums in terms of number of songs from each that he’s included. This is something that I thought Walker’s book should have had. Jackson, on the other hand, doesn’t try to improve the songs by editing them as Walker does, a good idea that I wouldn’t bother to actually do in most cases, and Walker adds a lot more side sets like cover albums, live albums and even albums combining the work of related artists like Yoko Ono and Lennon’s two sons.

As might be expected, I don’t agree with all of Jackson’s selections, though in most cases I disagree more about what he left out than what he put in, as most of his choices are at least decent and are often very good, even the ones I left out of my own albums. He doesn’t try to stretch Lennon’s material as far as Walker does, which means that on his post-1980 albums there are only a few Lennon songs (the last one has only McCartney and Starr songs, since Harrison had also died by then). This means his albums present a better picture of the four’s solo material, with McCartney being by far the most prolific over the entire post-breakup period and therefore having the most songs included. Even if it is argued that McCartney was more inconsistent than Lennon, meaning that he had a substantially lower great-to-mediocre ratio in his song output (which is I think debatable), the mere fact that he released far more songs even before Lennon’s death means that he easily had more worthy material. Walker ended up including a lot of songs from posthumous Lennon demo collections in order to have plenty of Lennon songs even on later sets. While I could see including a few of the best of these, it would be more natural to just let songs by McCartney and the others predominate on later faux Beatles sets, and perhaps just put on one or two Lennon songs from earlier in his solo career (after all, it was not unusual for the Beatles both as a band and as solo artists to release songs well after they had been written). Jackson’s solution of sticking fairly strictly to the actual release dates (which also means that his early to mid 1980s “Beatles” albums have few songs by Starr or Harrison, since they went for long periods without releasing anything) is also better than trying too hard to create a balance between contributions.

As noted above, Jackson also ranks the original solo albums by number of songs included. The ones at the top are mostly the ones one would expect, i.e., All Things Must Pass, Band on the Run, Imagine, Plastic Ono Band, Ram, and so forth. Further down there are some oddities, such as there being only a few songs from albums like Flaming Pie (the first of McCartney’s string of excellent post-Anthology albums) or Living in the Material World (which is only inferior to All Things Must Pass, Brainwashed, and possibly Cloud Nine among Harrison’s albums). He also includes too many cover songs. While I think all four did some excellent covers, I don’t think if they’d been releasing albums as the Beatles they’d have put many, if any, on them. It makes more sense to do a separate covers only album, as Walker did, or indeed as Lennon and McCartney did as solo artists (though the latter’s excellent rock ‘n’ roll covers album Run Devil Run included three good original tracks among the covers, including the great title track, which Jackson also leaves out). There are only four songs from Ringo, which is not only easily Starr’s best album but one of the best solo Beatle releases period. Venus and Mars, one of the better Wings albums, is also badly underrepresented. On the other hand, there are as many songs from Walls and Bridges as there are from Plastic Ono Band and Ram (seven each), putting it in the top six. While Walls and Bridges is a good album, I don’t think it’s that much better than Living in the Material World, Venus and Mars, Ringo, or for that matter Mind Games, all of which have far fewer songs included. And that’s without even getting into my disagreements regarding the individual songs, whether from the albums or from singles. But given how subjective these sorts of things are, some disagreement is inevitable. I suspect that if I actually sat down and assembled Jackson’s proposed albums – or for that matter Walker’s – I’d enjoy them immensely, at least nearly as much as I do the ones I put together myself. Still the Greatest will certainly be a major resource if I ever get around to completing my own set of imaginary post-breakup Beatles albums.

New Radio Show on Taiwanese Popular Music

I recently started doing a show on the radio station News98 (98.1) in Taipei, Taiwan. The show is to be broadcast every other Saturday from 3 to 5 pm. I expect to mainly focus on Taiwanese popular music, but I haven’t got it planned out in much detail. Since I collect a pretty wide variety of music, I imagine I’ll end up playing music from all over. I am particularly interested unusual or obscure recordings, I want to try to play as many of these as I can, since listeners are less likely to hear many of them elsewhere. On the other hand, I don’t want to overdo it, especially since at this point I’m not sure how much the people likely to tune in are likely to already know. The trick will be to make sure the audience has some connection to most stuff I play, whether because they’ve actually heard it before (or some version of it), or because they are familiar with the artist, though of course there are also a lot of really good songs that I think most people will like even if they know nothing about them at all. Also I want to have a lot of variety in the themes of my shows, without the contrast being so great from show to show that people find it too much to take. In any case, while I may want to set up a separate blog dedicated especially to this show, for the time being I’ll occasionally post about it here.

For my first show, which was broadcast on November 14, I decided to play a wide variety of songs as sort of a preview of some of the types of music I expect to play on future shows. I framed it to roughly reflect my own journeys in learning about the popular music of Taiwan and nearby places in Asia. Thus I started with one of the songs that was popular at the time I first came to Taiwan, and continued with songs by some of the first singer-songwriters I was introduced to when I started listening seriously to Taiwanese pop. Then I followed my explorations further and further back into the past and into the pop music of the smaller ethnic groups in the country as I started to learn more about Taiwanese popular music history. I then played a few Taiwanese rock songs and rock songs from Hong Kong and Thailand, before concluding with a song by one of my favorite recent Taiwanese aboriginal groups. I hope this selection gave listeners a good idea of the music that can expect to hear on my show in the future.

情網〈詞：劉虞瑞 曲：伍思凱〉 張學友 (1993)
把悲傷留給自己〈詞曲：陳昇〉 陳昇 (1991)
向前走〈詞曲：林強〉 林強 (1990)
戀曲1990〈詞曲：羅大佑〉 羅大佑 (1988)
無聲的所在〈詞：陳世杰 曲：吳俊霖〉 伍佰 & China Blue (1995)
鹿港小鎮〈詞曲：羅大佑〉 羅大佑 (1982)
走在雨中〈詞曲：李泰祥〉 齊豫 (1979)
迴旋曲〈詞：余光中 曲：楊弦〉 楊弦 (1975)
你說過〈詞：吳文良 曲：洪小喬〉 洪小喬 (1972/07)
回想曲〈詞：楊正[周藍萍] 曲：周藍萍〉 紫薇 (1961)
秋風夜雨〈詞：周添旺 曲：楊三郎〉 陳芬蘭 (1965)
無緣〈詞：呂金守 曲：吳盛智〉 吳盛智 (1981)
有空來玩〈詞：陳明仁 曲：卑南歌謠〉 北原山貓 (1997)
我不能出嫁〈詞曲：阿美歌謠〉 盧靜子 (1968)
Heaven on Fire〈詞曲：孫寰東〉 Metal Kids (1988)
長城〈詞：劉卓輝/詹德茂 曲：黃家駒〉 Beyond (1992)
Made In Thailand (W/M: Yuenyong Ophakul) Carabao (1984)
困惑 (fast) 〈詞：查馬克、阿新、Suming 曲：Suming、阿新〉 圖騰樂團 (2006)

Thirty Favorite Soul and R&B Classics

So far on this blog I’ve written a lot about British rock bands like the Beatles, Queen and Genesis, but of course there’s a lot of other great music out there. One type of music which had a very big influence on artists like Paul McCartney, Freddie Mercury and Phil Collins (among many others) is African American music like rhythm and blues and soul. These terms often are used to cover a pretty broad range of music, from the songs that served as the foundation for rock and roll to the music of artists like Prince and Erykah Badu. But for the following list I’ve stuck to the classic soul and R&B of the 1960s and early 1970s. This is by no means a comprehensive list of all the great songs in these genres, as most of these artists have a lot of other brilliant songs (I restricted myself to no more than two by any one artist), and there are plenty other important artists that I have to admit are missing from my collection (actually, even in this list there are a few songs I don’t actually own a copy of, though I want to get them all eventually). These are just the songs that came to mind when I was trying to think of some R&B and soul classics. I even included an example of so-called “blue-eyed soul”, “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” by the Righteous Brothers, as in my opinion it is good enough to stand alongside the others.

Thirty Favorite Soul and R&B Classics
What'd I Say (Charles) Ray Charles (1959)
Money (That's What I Want) (Gordy/Bradford/Strong) Barrett Strong (1959)
You Really Got a Hold on Me (Robinson) Smokey Robinson & the Miracles (1962)
Stand By Me (King/Leiber/Stoller) Ben E. King (1961)
A Change Is Gonna Come (Cooke) Sam Cooke (1964)
Dancing in the Street (Stevenson/Gaye/Hunter) Martha and the Vandellas (1964)
Under the Boardwalk (Young/Resnick) The Drifters (1964)
My Girl (Robinson/White) The Temptations (1964)
People Get Ready (Mayfield) The Impressions (1965)
The Tracks of My Tears (Robinson/Moore/Tarplin) Smokey Robinson & the Miracles (1965)
You've Lost That Lovin’ Feeling (Spector/Mann/Weil) The Righteous Brothers (1965)
I Got You (I Feel Good) (Brown) James Brown (1965)
You Can't Hurry Love (Holland/Dozier/Holland) The Supremes (1966)
Respect (Redding) Aretha Franklin (1967)
Reach Out (I'll Be There) (Holland/Dozier/Holland) The Four Tops (1966)
When a Man Loves a Woman (Lewis/Wright/Sledge) Percy Sledge (1966)
You Keep Me Hangin' On (Holland/Dozier/Holland) The Supremes (1966)
I'd Rather Go Blind (Jordan/Foster/James) Etta James (1967)
I Heard It Through the Grapevine (Whitfield/Strong) Marvin Gaye (1968)
(Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay (Redding/Cropper) Otis Redding (1968)
Think (Franklin/White) Aretha Franklin (1968)
Everyday People (Stewart) Sly & the Family Stone (1968'
War (Whitfield/Strong) Edwin Starr (1970)
What's Goin' On (Cleveland/Benson/Gaye) Marvin Gaye (1971)
Papa Was a Rollin' Stone (Whitfield/Strong) The Temptations (1972)
Ain't No Sunshine (Withers) Bill Withers (1971)
Higher Ground (Wonder) Stevie Wonder (1973)
If You Don't Know Me By Now (Gamble/Huff) Harold Melvin (1972)
Fight the Power (Part 1 & 2) (Isley/Isley/Isley/Isley/Isley/Jasper) The Isley Brothers (1975)
Sir Duke (Wonder) Stevie Wonder (1976)

Taiwanese Aboriginal Music Project Links

I haven't been posting with much frequency here, but I haven't been neglecting my music-related projects entirely. On the contrary, I've gone down to Taidong in east Taiwan every month for the past three months to work on my project on old Taiwanese aboriginal pop music. Here's some news reports on the shows I did in late August. In these shows we went to different aboriginal settlements and played old records for the local people, including a few of the original performers. The reports are all in Chinese and various aboriginal languages, but non-Chinese speakers can at least hear some of the music.

放歌的人 https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1&v=gkAj3ej-BKM

黑膠的原聲 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBdaCXh2CBo

Here's a link to one of the songs we did in our show back in February, in which younger singers covered the songs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1&v=F3fxrvd0ZH8

Our show in late September was similar to this one. If any online links to it are put up in the future, I'll eventually post them here.

Posthumous Queen Releases Part 2

This is a continuation of my previous blog post on "posthumous" Queen releases, i.e., ones that came out after the death of lead vocalist Freddie Mercury.

No-one But You (Only the Good Die Young)
This 1997 recording was the last newly recorded release to involve bassist John Deacon, who subsequently retired from music. The song was written by guitarist Brian May and was originally intended for a solo project, but when drummer Roger Taylor heard it, he suggested it could be released as a Queen song. Taylor also helped with the arrangement and suggested some changes to the lyrics. While Freddie Mercury himself was of course not on the recording, since he had been dead for six years, and so some might argue it isn’t a true Queen song on the basis that only songs with the full four man lineup are real Queen songs, there are also good arguments for including it as a legitimate part of the group’s canon. First of all, there were actually quite a few Queen songs that didn’t include the full band on the recording or that one or more members played a very minimal part on, including some without Mercury himself. May and Taylor, who handle the vocals here, of course sang lead vocals on a lot of their own compositions on the band’s classic 1970s albums and occasionally on later tracks. While Mercury usually did some backing vocals or even co-lead vocals and sometimes played piano on a lot of these, there were a few he seemingly didn’t appear on at all, so his absence on a “legitimate” Queen song is not unprecedented. What’s more, since the song was inspired by him and the lyrics are largely about him, he is arguably present in spirit (using the phrase loosely). As for the song itself, it is a very solid effort with a good melody, arrangement, and lyrics, and the three band members’ playing is up to their usual standards. It may not be one of their best songs ever, but it is still quite good and makes a nice farewell to Mercury, as well as a suitable swan song for Deacon as an active member of the band.

Queen + Paul Rodgers and The Cosmos Rocks
In 2004, Brian May and Roger Taylor teamed up with Paul Rodgers, formerly the vocalist for Free and Bad Company and the man behind hits such as “All Right Now”, for a concert tour and eventually a studio album named The Cosmos Rocks (released in 2008). They used the moniker “Queen + Paul Rodgers”, inevitably exciting debate among Queen fans about whether it was right to use the Queen name for the combination. This was not the first time the “Queen +” appellation had been used, as the EP featuring George Michael’s performance with May, Taylor and Deacon at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert had been billed as by “Queen + George Michael”, a one off live cover of “The Show Must Go On” with Elton John (Deacon’s last live performance) was released under the name “Queen + Elton John”, and May and Taylor did a cover of “We Are the Champions” with Robbie Williams using the name “Queen + Robbie Williams”, and other performances with guest vocalists had been similarly billed. The recording with Robbie Williams had generated some controversy, not least because Deacon made a statement critical of the combination, but May-Taylor-Rodgers grouping was the focus of even more intense discussion because it was not merely a one-off performance.

Of course no vocalist could replace Mercury in the sense of being exactly like him, and someone who attempted to imitate him would inevitably ring false. On the other hand, there is no reason that May and Taylor shouldn’t want to perform together as much as possible, and it is no surprise that their performances should focus on their work under Queen’s name, as most of their own best songs and recordings were originally performed by Queen. It is true any combination without Mercury or even Deacon can’t be considered Queen in the classic sense. But while May and Taylor’s decision to use the Queen name was obviously motivated in part by commercial considerations – not nearly as many people would turn up for a concert if they used the name Smile (May and Taylor’s pre-Queen band) or some other new name, or even their individual names – they were half of the classic band, they were performing Queen songs and the addition of “+ Paul Rodgers” (or “+ guest singer” for other combinations) to the name helped to distinguish the new grouping from the original group. So I don’t have any real objections to May and Taylor using the name, though I would still make some distinction between their performances with Rodgers and others and the classic four-man group.

As for the merits of the Queen + Paul Rodgers combination, it has been said with some fairness that while Rodgers is a good singer, he wasn’t necessarily a great fit for some of Queen’s material. I think there is something to this criticism. I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with radically different reinterpretations of songs, and in that sense it was interesting to hear Rodgers’ take on Queen’s songs, but many of them did sound less like Queen than they might have with a different vocalist. Adam Lambert, who May and Taylor have toured with more recently as Queen + Adam Lambert, seems to be a much better fit in this sense, since Lambert is stylistically much closer to Mercury while still being his own man (George Michael was the best guest vocalist at the tribute concert for much the same reasons). I tend to agree with the critics who have said Rodgers sounded best on the heavier tracks but sounded a bit out place on some of the other material. But since my goal here is to talk about new material released under the Queen name after Mercury’s death, I will just focus on The Cosmos Rocks, specifically the songs that struck me as being more Queen-like in my admittedly limited experience with the album.

Basically, while I enjoyed some of the songs that were written mainly by Rodgers, it is the ones written chiefly by Taylor or May that sound the most Queen-like, especially the ones the latter two sing lead on. This is not surprising, of course, as not only did May and Taylor write around half of Queen’s songs between them, they also sang prominently on quite a few of them. The standout songs for me were “C-lebrity”, “Small”, and “Say It’s Not True” (written by Taylor) and “Some Things That Glitter” and “We Believe” (written by May). These songs struck me as worthy of addition to the Queen canon, or at least as good candidates for inclusion. Some of the other songs were let down by weak lyrics – Taylor was particularly inconsistent in this area, writing good or even great lyrics on the above songs and terrible lyrics on others – and others just didn’t make much of an impression on me, though perhaps my view of them will change when I listen to the album more (for that matter, my favorable impressions of the songs mentioned might also change on closer listening).

Queen Forever
This compilation, which came out late last year, is the most recent Queen release and the first since Made in Heaven to feature previously unreleased material recorded with Freddie Mercury. Unfortunately, the new material is limited to three songs. The rest is previously released Queen songs. While these are of course mostly very good, they are unnecessary for fans like me who have the albums already, with the possible exception of a few songs like “Lily of the Valley” which on the original albums opened or close with segue-ways to other songs, making it difficult to separate them for purposes of making mix tapes or compilations. It would have been better to have released the new material with some demos or other unreleased material, if at all possible, or perhaps as an EP. Regardless, here’s my take on the new songs.

Let Me in Your Heart Again
This song, written by Brian May, was the only song that was completely new to me. It had been previously released, but only on an album by Anita Dobson, then May’s lover and later his wife. Queen had attempted a recording for the 1984 album The Works but abandoned it, and those initial efforts served as the basis for this recording. It’s a pretty good song, though not a great one, and qualifies as an authentic Queen song, if not a classic.

Love Kills
This song was familiar to me and most fans as a Freddie Mercury solo track. Supposedly it was also considered for The Works but rejected before being released by Mercury as a solo track from the soundtrack of Giorgio Moroder’s restoration of the classic film Metropolis, and apparently all four members of the group, including Deacon, appear on it. If it had been on The Works, it would have been the first Queen song to have been co-written by someone outside the band (in this case Moroder, who wrote it with Mercury), with the only later examples being “All God’s Children” (written by Mercury and Mike Moran) and “Too Much Love Will Kill You” (written by May with Frank Musker and Elizabeth Lamers). The version on Queen Forever is much slower than the Mercury solo version. It’s a decent track, though I haven’t decided whether I like this version or the Mercury solo version better. In any event, both versions fall into the “good but not great” category.

There Must Be More to Life Than This
This track, a version of a song written and previously released by Mercury on his first solo album Mr. Bad Guy, was the most widely discussed new release on Queen Forever because it is a duet between Mercury and Michael Jackson. It was one of (supposedly) three songs Mercury and Jackson recorded together in the early 1980s, but unfortunately this was the only one May and Taylor were able to get permission to release. I’ve previously heard a pirated recording of this song with just Jackson on vocals as well as a duet version, and I’ve also heard a pirated version of the Jackson song “State of Shock” sung by Mercury and Jackson (I’ve never seen or heard any version of the third song, said to be called “Victory”). It was one of the better songs on Mr. Bad Guy, and this is a reasonably good version as well, though it’s a little hard for me to think of it as a Queen song.

Though some of the songs discussed above (including "No-one But You" and the songs from The Cosmos Rocks) only seem to marginally qualify as Queen songs, they are all pretty good and if assembled together could make a decent Queen album, though a somewhat short one. In any case, while it is probably too much to expect any more releases of unreleased material by the classic Queen lineup, I hope May and Taylor continue to make music, including perhaps some new recordings together (it might be interesting to see what they could do with Lambert, for example). The old Queen may be gone forever now, but as the song says, "the show must go on".