Welcome back to Queen The Greatest,
in which we celebrate some of Queen’s most
outstanding songs, performances
and achievements since
the band formed in 1971.
In this series we’ve looked back at some
incredible moments from the Queen story
so far – but surely one of their finest
achievements must be what has become the
UK’s biggest selling album ever
– Queen’s Greatest Hits.
Released in 1981, with the now iconic
cover photo taken by Lord Snowden,
to mark the band’s first decade,
Greatest Hits contained no less than
17 hit singles.
[Advert Voice Over] “EMI present
Queen’s Greatest Hits.
17 of their very best tracks on one album.
Tracks like Bohemian Rhapsody
and Killer Queen.”
[Advert Voice Over] “Flash,
Somebody To Love, and We Will Rock You.
Plus Don’t Stop Me Now, Save Me,
and many, many more.
Probably the most exciting album
you’ve ever heard.
Queen’s Greatest Hits.”
When it came to choosing the tracks,
the album was constructed with the same
meticulous care Queen had become famous
for on their previous albums.
[Brian May] “Every album we ever made,
including the Hits albums, we thought
‘yeah, people are going to be putting this
on their turntables’, as it was at the
time, ‘and they will be listening to it
in sequence’.
And we want to give them a journey,
the tracks have to work in sequence.”
[Brian May] “It’s amazing that we accrued
that kind of catalogue of bona fide hits,
most people’s Greatest Hits are like
‘yeah, we’ve got a couple but we’re going
to throw a few things in which are
kind of, could’ve been hits.’
But this is all gold plated,
chart material.
So it’s easy, you just put the biggest
ones in and that was it.”
[Brian May] “And then we went on and
we did Greatest Hits 2,
and Greatest Hits 3,
all of which have done great.
And we have the Platinum Collection which
is all three of them together,
so it’s done amazingly well.
But the Greatest Hits 1 is something
very special, and every track you listen to
you think ‘ooh, yeah’.”
Since it’s release, the album has clocked
up an astonishing 6 and three quarter
million sales in the UK alone – making
it the biggest selling album of all time.
On top of that, it’s been in the UK album
charts for over 950 weeks,
and is widely believed to reside
in one in three UK homes.
[Brian May] “It’s amazing, I have to
pinch myself.
I have to say ‘yes, it is THE biggest
album of all time in this country’,
and I never realised it would get to
this kind of height.
I mean, it’s the ultimate compliment for
an artist really, to be sewn into
people’s lives to that extent.”
[Brian May] “So it feels great.
And we all feel the same.
I know Roger feels exactly the same.
We had that privilege of actually being
triggers in people’s lives which will
always be the case as long as this
generation, all these generations,
are around, that will be the case.
So, I feel very proud.”
In testament to their versatility and
universal appeal, alternative track
listings were created for different
territories, reflecting the international
popularity of Queen’s varied hits.
And incredibly, this has resulted in
a total of 25 million sales worldwide.
Queen’s Greatest Hits is one of
the Greatest hits in music history,
the perfect summary of the band’s
first ten years, and probably
the greatest playlist of all time…