Greatest Hits
The band's best-selling album to date, with total sales of over 25 million copies worldwide.
Greatest Hits is a compilation album by the British rock band Queen, released worldwide on 26 October 1981. The album consisted of Queen's biggest hits since their first chart appearance in 1974 with "Seven Seas of Rhye", up to their 1980 hit "Flash" (although in some countries, "Under Pressure", the band's 1981 UK number one single with David Bowie, was included). There was no universal track listing or cover art for the album, and each territory's tracks were dependent on what singles had been released there and which were successful.
Quick Facts
- Artist
- Queen
- Released
- 26 October 1981
- Genre
- Rock
- Length
- 58:19 (UK edition)
- Label
- EMI, Elektra
Lore & Background
The album's creation was complicated by regional differences. In the UK, the album was limited to Queen singles that had reached the top 20 in the UK singles chart up to that point, plus "We Will Rock You", which had been the B-side of "We Are the Champions". The US version added "Under Pressure", Queen's collaboration with David Bowie, which was released the same week as Greatest Hits. According to Queen's manager Jim Beach, the song was not included on European versions because the longer manufacturing time required to press records in Europe meant that several hundred thousand copies of the album had already been pressed up before the song had been recorded. In Argentina and Brazil, the LP edition included the same track listing as the UK Greatest Hits, minus "Seven Seas of Rhye" and including "Love of My Life" (Live Killers version). The cover photo was taken by Lord Snowdon at his home studio, using only natural light. For the 1981 release, the photo was skewed, but was later presented as it was originally taken for the 2011 re-release.
Reader's Guide
Greatest Hits spent four weeks at number one in the UK Albums Chart, and sold consistently well throughout the 1980s, becoming the fourth-biggest selling album of the decade. As of August 2026, Greatest Hits has spent 1,219 weeks on the UK Albums Chart and has been certified 23× platinum with sales of over seven million copies, making it the best-selling album of all time in the UK. In the US, Greatest Hits peaked at number eight on the Billboard 200 in November 2020, the second-slowest ascent to the top ten of the US album chart in history. As of August 2026, it has spent 712 weeks on the Billboard 200 and has been certified 9× platinum in the US. It has also been certified 15× platinum in Australia, 10× platinum in New Zealand, and 3× platinum in Canada. Following the release of the Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody in 2018, it re-entered the charts worldwide. Initial reviews in the British music press were negative — NME's Barney Hoskyns called the songs "quite repulsive, unbelievably crass insults to their respective genres" — but retrospective reviews have rated the album higher, with AllMusic awarding four and a half stars out of five.
Track listing
1981 UK edition (EMI) & 2011 UK edition (Island) / Has a photograph of the band
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bohemian Rhapsody (from A Night at the Opera, 1975) | Freddie Mercury | 5:57 |
| 2 | Another One Bites the Dust (from The Game, 1980) | John Deacon | 3:36 |
| 3 | Killer Queen (from Sheer Heart Attack, 1974) | Mercury | 2:57 |
| 4 | Fat Bottomed Girls (single version, from Jazz, 1978) | Brian May | 3:22 |
| 5 | Bicycle Race (from Jazz, 1978) | Mercury | 3:01 |
| 6 | You're My Best Friend (from A Night at the Opera, 1975) | Deacon | 2:52 |
| 7 | Don't Stop Me Now (from Jazz, 1978) | Mercury | 3:29 |
| 8 | Save Me (from The Game, 1980) | May | 3:48 |
1981 US and Canada edition
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Another One Bites the Dust | 3:37 | |
| 2 | Bohemian Rhapsody | 5:58 | |
| 3 | Crazy Little Thing Called Love | 2:44 | |
| 4 | Killer Queen | 3:02 | |
| 5 | Fat Bottomed Girls | 3:23 | |
| 6 | Bicycle Race | 3:01 | |
| 7 | Under Pressure (later included on Hot Space, 1982) | Queen, David Bowie | 4:05 |
| 8 | We Will Rock You | 2:02 | |
| 9 | We Are the Champions | 3:01 | |
| 10 | Flash | 2:49 | |
| 11 | Somebody to Love | 4:58 | |
| 12 | You're My Best Friend | 2:52 | |
| 13 | Keep Yourself Alive (single version in mono, from Queen, 1973) | May | 3:32 |
| 14 | Play the Game | 3:30 | |
| Total length | 47:58 | ||
Did You Know?
- In February 2014, Greatest Hits became the first album in the UK to sell over six million copies, and it was claimed that one in three families in the UK owned a copy.
- Greatest Hits was released alongside Greatest Flix, a 60-minute VHS compilation of all the videos Queen had made up until that point, and Greatest Pix, a 96-page paperback photo book.
More in Discography & Albums
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