Cosmos Rocks vs. A Kind of Magic

yes, a standoff. And I am afraid I will have to get used to Paul Rogers' voice first before I can decide much. The track I am playing now is so obviously a Brian May song that it sounds off because it is not Brian's voice singing it. Paul is certainly making his voice a bit softer, closer to the tone the song needs, but . . . . There are old-Queen elements mixed into these tracks, but they don't sound so natural yet. Maybe never. The tracks that are strongly Paul's sound like Bay company enough that one could substitute any guitarist and any drummer for Brian and Roger and get the same song and sound. I am liking the softer ballad style though. Paul's loud clear voice doesn't quite mesh with the instrumentation on some of the others, like his voice was just pasted over the top of another instrumental track. That IS in fact what they did with Freddy's voice for much of Made in Heaven, but after 22 years making music together, they could do that easily enough; they grew together musically, enough that each of them has a style that meshes with the rest and brings out each other for a stronger band and sound. Paul seems still to be just a guy playing with Queen, not a true member of the band, and if they are to make much more of this they need to a) change their name and weave together the sounds that work for them, not so much clashing 80's hair band style with what remains of Queen, or b) they need to keep the name Queen, drop the "+ Paul Rogers" bit, and work at developing more of a mesh, where Brian and Roger sow equally with Paul in their music. [ Honestly I would not be at all surprised if Brian has already thought long and hard about this, and come to similar conclusions, from the contrast between the 'mesh' in his songs on this album, and that of the rest of the album. I really ought to be listening to Queen's first album next, as that is the Queen sound most directly comparable to this one.