Greatest Hits

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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.

In Their Own Story

In 1991, Queen sought to issue a second Greatest Hits collection worldwide with a standard track listing, but the band had just changed record labels in the US, from Capitol to Hollywood Records. Elektra still held the US rights to that first 1981 collection. Hollywood Records decided not to release Greatest Hits II to the US market, but instead created their own collection, Classic Queen (1992), peaking at number four on the Billboard 200 chart. Later that year, Hollywood Records released a companion collection, Greatest Hits, with similar artwork on a red background (where Classic Queen was on royal blue). Commonly referred to as the Red Greatest Hits, it features most of the '70s tracks absent from Classic Queen. In 2004, to promote the Las Vegas production of the musical We Will Rock You, Hollywood Records released Greatest Hits: We Will Rock You Edition, which was the UK Greatest Hits with three bonus tracks.

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.

Did You Know?

• The album has spent 1,219 weeks on the UK Albums Chart as of August 2026, making it the best-selling album of all time in the UK.
• 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.
• The cover photo was taken by Lord Snowdon at his home studio using only natural light, and was originally skewed for the 1981 release before being corrected for the 2011 re-release.
• The US version of the album peaked at number eight on the Billboard 200 in November 2020, which was the second-slowest ascent to the top ten of the US album chart in history.
• 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.