A Night at the Opera

The album was named for the Marx Brothers film and made after Queen had broken free of Trident. Trident had been paying them 60 pounds a week, and Deacon had been refused a 4,000 pound advance toward a house deposit, an episode that fed Mercury's attack song Death on Two Legs. The band spent a month rehearsing at what became Ridge Farm Studio in Surrey, then recorded from August at Rockfield in Monmouthshire and at a string of London studios, on 24-track tape where the first three albums had used 16. Only God Save the Queen was cut at Trident, in October 1974. The album was reportedly the most expensive ever made at that point, at an estimated 40,000 pounds.

Each member wrote at least one song. Mercury wrote five, May four, and Taylor and Deacon one each. Taylor's I'm in Love with My Car was dedicated to roadie Johnathan Harris, and its place as the B-side of Bohemian Rhapsody earned Taylor as much publishing money as Mercury got from the A-side. May played harp on Love of My Life, a toy koto on The Prophet's Song and ukulele on the Dixieland-style Good Company. In the UK it was their first number one album, with four non-consecutive weeks at the top, and it reached number four in the US. NME's Tony Stewart wrote that if it was the most expensive album ever made in a British studio, it was also arguably the best. Rolling Stone placed it at 128 on its 2020 list of the 500 greatest albums. It entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2018.