Queen
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Queen began the 1980s with The Game. It featured the singles "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" and "Another One Bites the Dust", both of which reached number one in the United States. The album stayed number one for four weeks in the United States, and sold over four million copies. It was also the only album to ever top the Billboard rock, dance, and R&B charts simultaneously and marked the first appearance of a synthesiser on a Queen album. Heretofore, their albums featured a distinctive "No Synthesisers!" sleeve note. The note is widely assumed to reflect an anti-synth, pro-"hard"-rock stance by the band, but was later revealed by producer Roy Thomas Baker to
New sound and synthesisers (1980–84)
be an attempt to clarify that those albums' multi-layered solos were created with guitars, not synths, as record company executives kept assuming at the time. 1980 also saw the release of the soundtrack Queen had recorded for Flash Gordon. In 1981, Queen became the first major rock band to play in Latin American stadiums. Queen played to a total audience of 479,000 people on their South American tour, including five shows in Argentina and two in Brazil where they played to an audience of more than 130,000 people in the first night and more than 120,000 people the following night at Morumbi Stadium (São Paulo). In October of the same year, Queen performed for more than 150,000 fans on 9 October at Monterrey (Estadio Universitario) and 17 and 18 at Puebla (Estadio Zaragoza), Mexico. Queen worked with David Bowie on the single "Under Pressure". The first-time collaboration with another artist was spontaneous, as Bowie happened to drop by the studio while Queen were recording. Upon its release, the song was extremely successful, reaching number one in Britain. Later that same year, Queen released their first compilation album, entitled Greatest Hits, which showcased the group's highlights from 1974–1981. It was highly successful, and as of 2007, it is the United Kingdom's best selling album. Taylor became the first member of the band to release his own solo album in 1981, entitled Fun in Space. In 1982 the band released the album Hot Space, a departure from their trademark seventies sound, this time being a