Was Queen II almost a concept album? I tried reconstructing one from Mercury’s early Rhye songs
Most people know Queen for their biggest hits, but in their earliest albums, Freddie Mercury was writing something quite different: a group of fantasy songs set in an imaginary world called Rhye.
Queen II has always felt very close to being a concept album to me, especially the Black Side, but it never fully commits. The title is neutral, there’s no clear narrative, and some tracks don’t quite connect.
So I started wondering: what happens if you actually expand the Black Side into a full Rhye album?
I tried reconstructing a concept album from Mercury’s early Rhye songs, using the Black Side of Queen II as the core and expanding it with a few tracks from the surrounding albums. Heard this way, it starts to suggest a fragmented story of a king moving through that world.
I wrote a piece exploring the idea (structure, themes, references), which led to a conceptual album called The King of Rhye:
👉 https://medium.com/@yuvalron/the-king-of-rhye-freddies-secret-rock-opera-ab86918c8c3c
Curious to hear what you think: would you consider it a concept album?
(Originally published in August 2021, I revised and expanded the article following the release of the Queen II Collector’s Edition, which renewed my attention on Mercury’s early fantasy material.)