News of the World

The band booked two months for the sessions, far less than the five that A Day at the Races had taken. May said they had already decided to go back to basics, and that punk made the timing neat. Most of the sessions were at Wessex, where the Sex Pistols were working on their own album, and Mercury met Sid Vicious there. Vicious asked if Mercury had yet brought ballet to the masses, and Mercury replied that they were doing their best, dear. Taylor and Deacon wrote two songs each. Taylor played rhythm guitar and bass himself on Fight from the Inside, and May wrote and sang All Dead, All Dead and Sleeping on the Sidewalk.

The cover painting, by Frank Kelly Freas, adapts his 1953 magazine illustration of a giant robot holding a dead man, with the band in the man's place. We Are the Champions was the first single in October 1977, reaching number 2 in Britain and number 4 in the United States. The album went to number 4 in the UK and number 3 in the US, and has sold more than four million copies in America. Reviews were mixed at first. AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine later said that when it works it is massive, earth-shaking rock and roll, and NME ranked it the best Queen album.