The Vinyl of the Day is ‘A Day At The Races’, by Queen, 1976. The follow-up to their iconic 1975 ‘A Night At The Opera’, the band ironically followed the Marx Brothers in one way; they created a piece of work that would forever define them and be recognized as their greatest achievement, but would forever overshadow all their other works - making even very good performances seem ‘lesser than’ in most people’s eyes. Sadly that’s what happened with this album - even though it’s very good, with some of the band’s most memorable classic hits, it just wasn’t received as highly in comparison with ‘Opera’ - but then, what could be?
“A Day at the Races” follows in the footsteps of their previous masterpiece, and though the boys don’t quite capture the same magic, it’s still an enjoyable album and one of their better efforts. The one big number here is ‘Somebody to Love’, a breathtaking, beautiful gospel-rock number that practically makes the whole album great on it’s own. There’s more to like here, though, like 'Tie Your Mother Down’ by Brian May, one of their best rockers. Freddie indulges in some Opera-like experimentation with 'The Millionaire Waltz’, and some of the tracks are lively pop songs ('Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy’, 'You and I’ by John Deacon). Some of it does fall flat, with 'You Take My Breath Away’ boasting some complex and admittedly impressive harmonies, but it sounds like it’s trying too hard to be memorable and it’s drags on for five minutes. May and Deacon’s contributions are solid, but rarely as good as '39’ or 'You’re My Best Friend’, and Roger Taylor contributes only one decent but unremarkable number ('Drowse’).
Less artsy than ‘A Night At The Opera’, less edgy than ‘News Of The World’, and somewhat uneven throughout (as are all Queen albums), but still a fine work - ‘Opera’ and ‘Races’ stand together and apart from all of Queen’s earlier and later works, and in many ways represent the “middle period” of the bands history. If you’re a Queen fan, no collection of their discography is whole without these two albums centered together prominently.
From Wikipedia;
The Washington Post described A Day at the Races as “a judicious blend of heavy metal rockers and classically influenced, almost operatic, torch songs. “The Winnipeg Free Press was also appreciative, writing, “Races is a reconfirmation of Queen’s position as the best of the third wave of English rock groups.” Circus gave the album a mixed review, writing, “With A Day at the Races, they’ve deserted art-rock entirely. They’re silly now. And wondrously shameless.” Dave Marsh, writing in Rolling Stone, was more critical and described Freddie Mercury as possessing a merely “passable pop voice”. He found Queen to be the least experimental of eclectic contemporary rock groups and accused them of having “brazen” “commercial aspirations”. Q magazine wrote that “the breadth of its ambition remains ever impressive, as do tracks such as May’s stomping ‘Tie Your Mother Down’ and Mercury’s baroque one-two, ‘Somebody To Love’ and 'Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy’.”
In 2006, a national BBC poll saw A Day at the Races voted the 67th greatest album of all time. The same year, in a worldwide Guinness and NME poll to find the “Greatest 100 Albums of All Time”, A Day at the Races was voted #87. It was also featured in Classic Rock and Metal Hammer’s “The 200 Greatest Albums of the 70s,” being listed as one of the 20 greatest albums of 1976. Outranked it No. 20 of 100 in a poll of “more than 100 actors, comedians, musicians, writers, critics, performance artists, label reps, and DJs, asking each to list the 10 albums that left the most indelible impressions on their lives.” In the 1987 edition of the The World Critics List, the BBC’s Peter Powell ranked A Day at the Races the 6th greatest album of all time, and Jim DeRogatis of the Chicago Sun-Times included the record in his “The Great albums” in 2006.
AllMusic Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
In every sense, A Day at the Races is an unapologetic sequel to A Night at the Opera, the 1975 breakthrough that established Queen as rock & roll royalty. The band never attempts to hide that the record is a sequel – the two albums boast the same variation on the same cover art, the titles are both taken from old Marx Brothers films and serve as counterpoints to each other. But even though the two albums look the same, they don’t quite sound the same, A Day at the Racesis a bit tighter than its predecessor, yet tighter doesn’t necessarily mean better for a band as extravagant as Queen. One of the great things about A Night at the Opera is that the lingering elements of early Queen – the pastoral folk of "39,” the metallic menace of “Death on Two Legs” – dovetailed with an indulgence of camp and a truly, well, operatic scale. Here, the eccentricities are trimmed back somewhat – they still bubble up on “The Millionaire Waltz,” an example of the music hall pop that dominated Night, the pro-Native American saga “White Man” is undercut somewhat by the cowboys 'n’ indians rhythms – in favor of a driving, purposeful hard rock that still could have some slyly hidden perversities (or in the case of the opening “Tie Your Mother Down,” some not-so-hidden perversity) but this is exquisitely detailed hard rock, dense with minutiae but never lush or fussy. In a sense, it could even function as the bridge between Sheer Heart Attack and Night at the Opera – it’s every bit as hard as the former and nearly as florid as the latter – but its sleek, streamlined finish is the biggest indication that Queen has entered a new phase, where they’re globe-conquering titans instead of underdogs on the make.