Hot Space by Queen

Hot Space, Queen's tenth album, landed in May 1982 on EMI in Britain and Elektra in America, and it's the one where one of the biggest stadium rock bands on earth went clubbing. The runaway American success of "Another One Bites the Dust" had sold them on making a dance record, so Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon, producing themselves, loaded it with disco, funk, R&B, pop and new wave.

Plenty of fans who wanted the old rock thunder weren't having it, especially with the backlash against disco in full swing, though "Body Language" still reached number 11 in America. The track that has lasted is "Under Pressure", the collaboration with David Bowie, recorded as its own project ahead of the album and already a UK number one by the time it was tacked on here.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.