“We couldn’t reinvent ourselves as a punk band, but we wanted it a little more simple...” Roger Taylor

Queen's sixth studio album was recorded between July and September 1977 at two studios, Basing Street and Wessex. The band produced the record themselves for the first time, without Roy Thomas Baker but still assisted by Mike Stone.

In terms of musical content, News Of The World was a significant departure from the two albums preceding it. The band spent half the time they had previously taken to record this album (roughly ten weeks) and this accounts for the comparatively sparse production and certain songs emerging with what many would describe as an under-produced sound - by Queen standards anyway.

The album cover features a striking image of the band adapted from a painting by esteemed American science-fiction artist Frank Kelly Freas. The unsettling depiction of a giant robot plucking the four band members from a shattered auditorium, is among the most affecting of all Queen related imagery, as is a further picture inside of the robot stretching out his hand to snatch petrified fleeing audience members. The idea came from Roger who had seen a copy of an American magazine called Astounding Science, and thought that with a little adaptation it would make an excellent cover for the new Queen album. Kelly Freas loved the idea of his creation being adapted to this unlikely scenario and agreed to alter the picture to show the band members in the robot's blood-stained hand. It is among the most striking and memorable of any album artwork, and numerous worldwide singles from the LP, as well as myriad of weird and wonderful merchandise items too numerous to list, featured variations of the scene.

The first single released from News Of The World was the worldwide coupling of We Are The Champions and We Will Rock You, penned by Freddie and Brian respectively. Released on October 7th, the single reached No 2 in the charts and also realised a Billboard No 2 position in the USA. Although it is often said that Crazy Little Thing Called Love (1979) was Queen's first American chart topper, the Champions / Rock You single reached the top spot of Record World's chart, and thus, technically, gave the band their first American No 1. The two songs matched each other so well that in America the record company requested permission to release the single as a double A-side, and subsequently both songs were given equal airplay – giving Elektra Records their biggest selling single to date, with over two million copies sold.

In France, the single stayed at No 1 for twelve consecutive weeks, after which, and only because no record was permitted to be No 1 for any longer than twelve weeks, the chart was published with Rock You as No 1 instead.

A special video was filmed for We Are The Champions, directed by Derek Burbridge and shot at the New London Theatre in London on October. It featured invited members of the London-based Queen Fan Club, who later were treated to a ten song mini-concert as a thank you for their contribution. The footage was shown all around the world and remains today one of the band’s best loved and most viewed videos.

For the We Will Rock You video, the band were filmed in the garden of Roger's recently acquired country home on a freezing day in January 1978, in a few minutes left over from shooting a promo for Spread Your Wings, the next single.

The News Of The World album was released on October 28th 1977 in the UK (the same day that Queen recorded their final session for BBC radio) and on November 1st in America. For the first time, this album fared better in America than in the band's home country, reaching No 3 in the Billboard chart and No 4 in Britain.

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