We’d all like for our most beloved rock stars to age gracefully; barring that, they can always die young, leaving a body of work largely uncompromised because it was cut off abruptly. That’s what happened to Queen singer Freddie Mercury, and for many years his surviving bandmates did the aging-gracefully thing. But in 2005, guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor joined forces with former Bad Company and Free singer Paul Rodgers to resurrect Queen, first with a tour showcasing the band’s classic hits, and now with an album of new material.
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The problem with The Cosmos Rocks is not so much that it disrespects Mercury’s legacy (although “Still Burnin’” does tackily feature a reprise of the drum beat of “We Will Rock You”), but that it’s a plodding, unimaginative, cheesy classic-rock retread. Rodgers’ bluesy voice doesn’t really fit with the operatic sound of Queen, so the album mostly stays away from grand ambition, instead offering up generic rockers with awful lyrics (“We got the cosmos rocking/To the mighty power of rock ’n’ roll”) and tepid ballads with even worse lyrics (“Once I loved a butterfly/Don’t wonder how, don’t ask me why”). Only the laid-back boogie of “Call Me” avoids sounding awkward and stilted. As embarrassing as May, Taylor and Rodgers were as a Queen cover band, at least then they had some decent songs to play.
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