Marking a notable shift in direction from their earlier work, they employed many elements of disco, funk, R&B, dance, pop and new wave music on the album.

[3][1] Combined with the ongoing backlash against disco music, this made the album less popular with fans who preferred the traditional rock style they had come to associate with the band.

[11] Although included on Hot Space, the song was a separate project and was recorded ahead of the album, before the controversy over Queen's new disco-influenced rock sound.

Elaborating, he said: "John’s always been R&B orientated, our bass player who wrote 'Another One Bites The Dust', ... which turned out to be the biggest selling record of the year.

"[14] Disliking the new sound, Brian May and Taylor were critical of the influence that Paul Prenter, Freddie Mercury's personal manager between 1977 and 1984, had on the singer.

May also noted that the making of the album in Munich took much longer than usual and that all of the band got into "deep emotional trouble" in the city, blaming a mixture of drink, drugs and partying as the reason for the relatively lengthy recording sessions.

The song itself – a fusion of rock and disco – is something of a follow-up to "Dragon Attack" from the band's 1980 album The Game in that it fuses heavy elements of music with danceable ones, as Led Zeppelin did.

The "Body Language" video, featuring scantily clad models writhing around each other in a bathlike setting, proved somewhat controversial and was banned in a few territories.

Whilst the video was restricted to late-night showings on MTV, it nonetheless helped the song become the album's biggest hit in America, reaching number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 in June 1982.

[22] "Action This Day" takes its title from a Winston Churchill catchphrase that the statesman would attach to urgent documents, and recapitulates the theme of social awareness that Taylor espoused in many of his songs.

Mercury wrote "Life Is Real" as a tribute to John Lennon, whose murder in 1980 had also previously prompted the band to perform his song "Imagine" on tour.

May's lyrics for "Las Palabras de Amor" were inspired by Queen's close relationship with their Latin-American fans, and have been interpreted as an allegory for the Falklands War.

"Cool Cat", written by Mercury and Deacon, originally featured David Bowie on backing vocals and a few lines of spoken word to a rhythm during the middle eight.

According to Mercury in a 1982 TV interview, Bowie was unhappy with the results and requested that his vocals be removed days before its parent album was slated to be released.

[25] The alternate take with Bowie's vocals still intact is widely available on various bootleg recordings[26] and surfaces from an early 1982 vinyl Hot Space test pressing from the US.

"[39] Alex Petridis of The Guardian gave the album two stars and said: "Like Queen, disco was melodramatic, unrepentantly camp, extravagantly arranged and omnivorous in its influences.

By the time of 1982's Hot Space, disco had mutated into the weird, skeletal, dubby electronic sound pioneered by DJ Larry Levan, which really didn't suit Queen at all."

Sandy Robertson of Sounds gave the album four stars, describing it as "fairly lickable funkpop" featuring "'Put Out The Fire'... with, plenty screaming Brian May axe histrionics ... a ballad in the old boy's mode called 'Life Is Real' ... a candymix of phasers, acoustics and electrics in 'Calling All Girls' ... sleazy keyboard/vocal pomp sobs in 'Las Palabras De Amor' ... a languid summer streak and slow slide through 'Cool Cat' and the cornerstone 'Under Pressure' itself.

[40][41] In a 2015 interview with Greg Prato of Songfacts, Extreme guitarist Nuno Bettencourt described how Hot Space had been an important album for him as a musician.

After the conclusion of the Hot Space tour in late 1982, the band would rarely include songs from the album in their later live set-lists with only "Under Pressure" remaining as a staple until their final concerts in 1986.