Hot Space

John Deacon spearheaded the album's disco approach.

Before 1979, Queen had never used synthesisers on their albums.[11] Beginning with The Game, Queen began using Oberheim OB-X synthesisers on their songs, including "Play the Game" and "Save Me". On Hot Space, the band went even further, introducing the drum machine for the first time. A departure from their trademark seventies sound, most of Hot Space is a mixture of rhythm and blues, funk, dance and disco, while the rock songs continued in a pop rock direction similar to their previous album (an exception is the song "Put Out the Fire").[1][2]

During an interview in 1984, Roger Taylor affirmed that "it was really John [Deacon]" who turned the band towards a more disco sound. Elaborating, he said: "John’s always been R&B orientated, our bass player who wrote 'Another One Bites The Dust', ... which turned out to be the biggest selling record of the year. And I think that was the song that catapulted us into taking that road. I think we went too far and did too much. ... Everybody in the band feels that way now."[12]

Disliking the new sound, Brian May and Taylor were critical of the influence that Paul Prenter, Freddie Mercury's personal manager between 1977 and 1984, had on the singer.[13] Recalling the recording process in 2011, Taylor openly criticized the direction in which Prenter was taking Mercury (and thus the rest of the band), stating that "[Prenter] wanted our music to sound like you'd just walked in a gay bar...and I didn't". May also noted that the making of the album in Munich took much longer than usual and that all of the band got into "deep emotional trouble" in the city, blaming a mixture of drink, drugs and partying as the reason for the relatively lengthy recording sessions.[14] According to Mack, Queen's producer, Prenter loathed rock music and was in Mercury’s ear throughout the Hot Space sessions.[13] Prenter also refused all requests from US radio stations to speak to Mercury.[13] May states, "this guy, in the course of one tour, told every record station to fuck off. But not just "fuck off", but "Freddie says, ‘fuck off’".[13] Queen roadie Peter Hince wrote "None of the band cared for him [Prenter], apart from Freddie", with Hince regarding Mercury's favouring of Prenter as an act of "misguided loyalty".[13]

Arif Mardin contributed horn arrangements to "Staying Power".

The horn arrangement for Mercury's "Staying Power" was added by Arif Mardin (who also produced Chaka Khan and added horn sections to Bee Gees and Aretha Franklin records).[15] "Staying Power" would be performed on the band's accompanying Hot Space Tour, albeit much faster and heavier, with real drums replacing the drum machine and guitars and keyboards replacing the horns. (This arrangement contained no actual bass guitar, as John Deacon played guitar in addition to May.) It was also played on Queen's The Works Tour, until it was dropped from the setlist halfway through the European leg of the tour. In Japan, the band released "Staying Power" as a single in July 1982. Mardin's contributions were recorded at Record Plant Studios in New York. The original demo of the track featured a guitar instead of horns.

The bassline of May's "Dancer" was played on an Oberheim OB-Xa synthesiser by him. The song itself – a fusion of rock and disco – is something of a follow-up to "Dragon Attack" from the band's 1980 album The Game in that it fuses heavy elements of music with danceable ones, as Led Zeppelin did.[15] The phone message at the end of "Dancer" ("Guten Morgen, Sie wünschten, geweckt zu werden.") is in German, and was recorded in a hotel room in Munich; it translates as "Good morning, you wanted to be woken up.". The lyrics of "Dancer" are also notable for being the only ones on the album that make reference to the album title itself.[16]

"Back Chat", written by John Deacon, is the track most influenced by black music. In addition to normal bass duties, Deacon also plays rhythm guitar[17] and synthesiser on the song. As the album's final single, it stalled at number 40 on the UK charts and failed to chart in the US.

"Body Language" is atypical among Queen songs, as there is very little guitar on the track, with the song being driven by a rhythmic bassline. Mercury, who composed the song on synth bass, had previously explored the instrument's potential with his contributions to the Flash Gordon soundtrack.[18] The song's lyrics describe the gay cruising culture which Mercury was immersed in at the time. The "Body Language" video, featuring scantily clad models writhing around each other in a bathlike setting, proved somewhat controversial and was banned in a few territories. The song also appeared in the 1984 documentary film Stripper, being performed to by one of the dancers. Whilst the video was restricted to late-night showings on MTV, it nonetheless helped the song become the album's biggest hit in America, reaching number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 in June 1982.[19]

"Action This Day", one of two Taylor songs that appear on the album, was clearly influenced by the new wave movement/style current at the time; the track is driven by a pounding electronic drum machine in 2/4 time and features a saxophone solo, played by Italian session musician Dino Solera.[20] "Action This Day" takes its title from a Winston Churchill catchphrase that the statesman would attach to urgent documents, and recapitulates the theme of social awareness that Taylor espoused in many of his songs. The band performed "Action This Day" at every show on the Hot Space Tour with a more conventional arrangement, replacing the drum machine and bass synth with a rock rhythm section and replacing the saxophone solo with an actual synthesizer. The verses are duets between Taylor and Mercury, while the chorus is sung by both.

"Put Out the Fire" is an anti-firearm song written by May, featuring lead vocals and falsetto by Mercury, and backing vocals by Mercury, May and Taylor. May recorded its guitar solo under the influence of alcohol (after many unsuccessful attempts).[18]

Though never released as a single, "Put Out the Fire", the album's most traditional Queen song, later appeared on the Queen Rocks compilation in 1997. A new video was also produced for the accompanying video compilation, featuring a live performance of the song intercut with footage of fire and explosions.

"Life Is Real" was written in honor of murdered Beatles vocalist John Lennon.

Mercury wrote "Life Is Real" as a tribute to John Lennon, whose murder in 1980 had also previously prompted the band to perform his song "Imagine" on tour. It is also one of the few Mercury songs whose lyrics were written before the music.

"Life Is Real (Song for Lennon)" was not played live on the European leg of the tour. It was only played a couple of times on the North American leg.

The first Queen song written by Taylor to be released as a single (albeit in selected countries, including the US and Australia, but not the UK), "Calling All Girls" failed to create much of an impact on the charts where it peaked at number 60 in the US and number 33 in Canada, despite its music video based on the George Lucas film THX 1138. Taylor composed "Calling All Girls" on guitar and played the feedback noises during the song's break.[18] Queen never performed the song in Europe, and a live recording from Japan in 1982 is commercially available on the Queen on Fire – Live at the Bowl DVD, where "Calling All Girls" accompanies the photo gallery. The single was released in July 1982.

May's lyrics for "Las Palabras de Amor" were inspired by Queen's close relationship with their Latin-American fans, and have been interpreted as an allegory for the Falklands War.[15] A top 20 hit in the UK, "Las Palabras de Amor" marked the band's sixth single to feature at least one in-studio appearance on Top of the Pops, the others being "Seven Seas of Rhye" (three performances, only partially still existing), "Killer Queen" (two performances, one of which only partially exists), "Now I'm Here" (two performances, with only one of them partially existing) and "Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy" (one performance). For this mimed performance, May is seen playing a grand piano, although he only played synthesisers on the recording. May also sang lead vocals for the harmonised line "this night and evermore".

David Bowie contributed vocals to "Cool Cat" and "Under Pressure", though his parts on the former were removed at his request.

"Cool Cat", written by Mercury and Deacon, originally featured David Bowie on backing vocals and a few lines of spoken word to a rhythm during the middle eight. According to Mercury in a 1982 TV interview, Bowie was unhappy with the results and requested that his vocals be removed days before its parent album was slated to be released.[21] With the exception of the electric piano (which was played by Mercury), all the instruments are played by Deacon, including guitars, synths and a drum machine.[22] On the album version, Mercury sings the entire song in falsetto.[23] The alternate take with Bowie's vocals still intact is widely available on various bootleg recordings[24] and surfaces from an early 1982 vinyl Hot Space test pressing from the US. Deacon can be heard using the slap bass technique throughout the track. This song in 2023 has been used in an Amazon Prime commercial [25] featuring a young woman who among other things has a bobblehead of Mercury and buys a jacket on Prime similar to the one Mercury on the bobblehead is wearing.

A duet with Bowie, "Under Pressure" was the result of an impromptu jam session in the band's studio in Montreux.[26] When it was released in 1981, "Under Pressure" reached number one in the UK singles chart.[27] Although it was credited to the entire band and Bowie, Mercury was the primary director of this track, with him and Bowie being the main lyricists (each writing the lines they sang). John Deacon came up with the bass riff.[28] Part of the chord progression is based on a rough demo of an unreleased song, "Feel Like".[29] The songwriting is credited to all five participants.