released their eleventh studio album

In February 1984, Queen released their eleventh studio album, The Works . Hit singles included ” Radio Ga Ga “, which makes a nostalgic defence of the radio format, ” Hammer to Fall ” and ” I Want to Break Free “. Rolling Stone hailed the album as “the Led Zeppelin II of the eighties.” In the UK The Works went triple platinum and remained in the albums chart for two years. The album failed to do well in the US, where, in addition to issues with their new record label Capitol Records (who had recently severed ties with their independent promotions teams due to a government report on payola ), the cross-dressing video for “I Want to Break Free”, a spoof of the British soap opera Coronation Street , proved controversial and was banned by MTV . The concept of the video came from Roger Taylor via a suggestion from his girlfriend. He told Q magazine: “We had done some really serious, epic videos in the past, and we just thought we’d have some fun. We wanted people to know that we didn’t take ourselves too seriously, that we could still laugh at ourselves.” Director of the video David Mallet said Mercury was reluctant to do it, commenting “it was a hell of a job to get him out of the dressing room”.