Another useless critic and this one from the New Yorker mag......
After Freddie Mercury died, in 1991, the fate of Queen seemed clear: the guitarist Brian May and the drummer Roger Taylor would hang it up, unable to continue without their idiosyncratic, flamboyant front man. But May and Taylor were more resourceful: they simply acquired a less idiosyncratic, less flamboyant front man—the veteran belter Paul Rodgers—and soldiered on, playing old Queen favorites in a new, senseless context. Now the band has released “The Cosmos Rocks” (EMI), a studio album that’s everything that Freddie Mercury fans could have hoped for: a minor travesty. Questions of good and bad are irrelevant—this is Queen, remember. Still, nearly every song is laughably generic, as May piles on guitar effects and Rodgers alternates between fist-pumping rockers and power ballads. If there’s a theme, it probably has to do with our place in the universe, as the title suggests. But May, who recently returned to school to complete his Ph.D. thesis (“A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud”), should rediscover life on earth instead. link
I think one of the reasons for The Cosmos Rocks receiving so many poor reviews is that the new album/band is inevitably being compared to Queen of old. Brian et al can say that "Queen + Paul Rodgers" is a different/new band but most people don't see it that way and consider this a new incarnation of Queen, with Paul as the replacement for Freddie. The Queen + Paul Rodgers tour of 2005 was fantastic and set them on the right track towards a new album, another tour etc, but in my opinion with the new album they should have come up with a new band name and dropped "Queen + Paul Rodgers" altogther. Coming up with a new band name would definitely have established Bryan May, Rodgers Tailor and Paul Roger as a totally separate entity from "Queen" and maybe the new album could have avoided so many poor reviews. (Saying that though I don't think it's that good an album anyway.)
Yawn. The reason this is getting bad reviews is that reviewerslove telling us they're too cool for this shit. C'mon, nearly everything by Queen was shredded by the press, and now this compares unfavorably? Piss off. I get more than enough trolls on Queenzone, I don't need them in my papers.
P-Staker wrote: C'mon, nearly everything by Queen was shredded by the press, and now this compares unfavorably?
Spot on. The only time Queen got respect from the press was after Freddie died and it became fashionable to heap praise upon the band's corpse. Now that the band isn't a corpse anymore, its back to the original playbook. So the band will do what they've always done - go over the heads of the critical press and take the music to the people.
Questions of good and bad are irrelevant—this is Queen, remember. Still, nearly every song is laughably generic, as May piles on guitar effects and Rodgers alternates between fist-pumping rockers and power ballads.
Although the first sentence might mean some tendency to overcriticize Queen by default, it's quite accurate afterwards.
q-_-p wrote: I think one of the reasons for The Cosmos Rocks receiving so many poor reviews is that the new album/band is inevitably being compared to Queen of old. Brian et al can say that "Queen + Paul Rodgers" is a different/new band but most people don't see it that way and consider this a new incarnation of Queen, with Paul as the replacement for Freddie. The Queen + Paul Rodgers tour of 2005 was fantastic and set them on the right track towards a new album, another tour etc, but in my opinion with the new album they should have come up with a new band name and dropped "Queen + Paul Rodgers" altogther. Coming up with a new band name would definitely have established Bryan May, Rodgers Tailor and Paul Roger as a totally separate entity from "Queen" and maybe the new album could have avoided so many poor reviews. (Saying that though I don't think it's that good an album anyway.)
I agree with most of what you said, but regardless if we compare it to Queen or not, this album sucks. Plain and simple. It's not very creative, the lyrics are horrible and it just falls flat on its face when you think of the 'hype' that came out before this thing was released.