Queen dabbled their toes into the world of CD’s as early as 1983, but released their full album discography on CD in 1986. About two years later, in 1988, they decided to release some of their past singles on the 3″ CD-single format. Possibly because it was a new exiting format for singles by other artists at the time (and also by Queen as of 1989, starting with I Want It All), though that excitement wore off fairly quickly: by the early 90’s it was rarely used.
Queen released twelve 3″ CD’s in three batches in the UK in 1988, being on the 24th of October, 14th of November and the 5th of December. Each single came in its own individual clear blister pack.
Germany was special. EMI Germany imported a number of full sets and released them as a bundle called The 3″CD-Singles. It is being reported that this set was also released in 1988, though I have some doubts. The Queen logo on this set wasn’t used until their single I Want It All was released in May 1989. Still, the new logo might have already been created or known by late 1988. This would then be the first release with this new Miracle-era logo to my knowledge.
This German set comes in a beautiful leather wallet. The Queen and record company logos plus title are printed in gold on the front. The back contains a number, again printed in gold, which represents the individual number for each set. Yes, this is a numbered edition, limited to just 555 copies and is dubbed the “royal limited edition”. Nice!
Once opened, you see a printed leaflet on the left, giving some basic information about the set, including the aforementioned information. Most sets also came with a gold sticker, stating “royal limited edition of 555 copies / Sortiment Nr. 1 6666 31“. Some sets had this sticker on the back of the leather wallet, some had it at the top of this info leaflet whereas others didn’t had this sticker at all (or a buyer maybe removed it). I assume that number 1 6666 31 is the catalogue number for this set.
You are greeted with two of the twelve CD’s at the right, featuring Seven Seas Of Rhye and Killer Queen. The last page inside this wallet contains a full track list of all twelve CD’s, the song duration and the catalogue number of each single. The below photo also gives a glimpse of the back of the last two singles which are for I Want To Break Free and A Kind Of Magic.
The full set covers the following main titles:
- Seven Seas Of Rhye
- Killer Queen
- Bohemian Rhapsody
- Somebody To Love
- First EP aka Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy
- We Are The Champions
- Crazy Little Thing Called Love
- Another One Bites The Dust
- Under Pressure (with David Bowie)
- Radio Ga Ga
- I Want To Break Free
- A Kind Of Magic
Each CD features three songs with the exception of CD 5, their first EP, which features four songs, as per the original release in 1977.
Most bonus songs on each disc are either related to the original single or from that era, but not necessarily from the same album. For example, We Are The Champions (from News Of The World) features the single edit of Fat Bottomed Girls, which is from the album Jazz.
Audio wise it is a hutch pot with pros and cons.
Four non-album songs, See What A Foold I’ve Been (1974), Soul Brother (1981), I Go Crazy (1984) and A Dozen Red Roses For My Darling (1986) saw their digital debut on these mini CD’s. Same for some single edits including Fat Bottomed Girls, Flash and Hammer To Fall.
Other songs were not as per the original single releases. Of all tracks, they managed to “screw up” Bohemian Rhapsody by including the interlude from the album A Night At The Opera which originally occurred after Good Company. A case of incorrect track indexing. Funny How Love Is also suffers from bad track indexing as it starts with the last 26 seconds from The March Of The Black Queen. That issue was however also present on Queen II‘s 1986 CD release.
I’m In Love With My Car is the standard album version instead of the, arguably better, single version. Same for Tie Your Mother Down which includes the A Day At The Races “orchestral” album guitar intro.
Tenement Funster and Flick Of The Wrist form a medley on the album Sheer Heart Attack. The latter song has a clean piano intro on the original 1974 single, though this 1988 version starts with the last guitar chord from Tenement Funster and fades out at the end instead of a clean guitar outro.
Some of these issues were corrected or bettered on a Japanese 3″ CD-single set from 1991.
All in all this is a great set. Especially from a presentation point of view. I bought this set around 2000, but then sold it again around 2007. Last week, 17 years later, I added it to the collection again. Fun fact: my current copy has number 219 whereas my previous copy had number 224. A nice small increase – one day I will own #1 🙂
