Queen: Difference between revisions

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* "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tJYN-eG1zk We Will Rock You]" and "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sogKUx_q7ig We Are The Champions]"(Dual A-side, almost always played one after another on the radio), are both vastly famous rock anthems.

* "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS4_Z84-rRE Flash]" ([[Theme Tune]] to the 1980 ''[[Flash Gordon (Film)|Flash Gordon]]'' movie) with samples of [[Brian Blessed]]. FLASH! AAAAAAHHHHHHHH-AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH! SAVIOR OF THE UNIVERSE!

* "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Jtpf8N5IDE Who Wants To Live Forever]", a May penned ballad and a favorite among Queen's fandom, originally recorded, among others, for ''[[Highlander (Film)|Highlander]]''. Not to mention [[Who Wants to Live Forever|it is]] a [[Trope Namers]].

* "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Jtpf8N5IDE Who Wants To Live Forever]", a May penned ballad and a favorite among Queen's fandom, originally recorded, among others, for ''[[Highlander (Film)|Highlander]]''. Not to mention [[Who Wants to Live Forever?|it is]] a [[Trope Namers]].

* "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnrXiaPVeHY Princes Of The Universe]", the main theme for ''[[Highlander (Film)|Highlander]]''. Heeeeeeeeeeeeere we aaaaaaarrrrrre. Born to be kings, we're the princes of the uuuuuuuniverrrrrrrrrse.

* "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMz-wi50ACU Killer Queen]", their first single to be successful.

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Discography:

* 1973 - ''[[Self Titled Album|Queen]]''

* 1973 - ''[[Self-Titled Album|Queen]]''

* 1974 - ''Queen II''

* 1974 - ''Sheer Heart Attack''

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* [[All Drummers Are Animals]]: Roger Taylor probably cultivated the hardest rocking image in the group.

* [[All Star Cast]]: The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert.

* [[All-Star Cast]]: The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert.

** Freddie Mercury's debut solo album had been initially supposed to feature Jeff Beck on guitar and Michael Jackson (who'd just released ''Thriller'') dueting on a song. Oh, [[What Could Have Been|if only]]...

** Queen itself, arguably, since all members were considered to be one of the best (and apart from Freddie, one of the most underrated) at what they did.

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* [[American Accents]]: Freddie claims to have one during the 1986 Wembley concert, and asks the audience if they like it. It's pretty good.

* [[The Apartheid Era]]: The band got a lot of heat for playing the Sun City resort in South Africa during apartheid.

* [[Arson Murder and Jaywalking]]: The titular character from "The March of the Black Queen" is known to 'boil' (people), 'bake' (people) and to 'never dot her "i"s'.

* [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking]]: The titular character from "The March of the Black Queen" is known to 'boil' (people), 'bake' (people) and to 'never dot her "i"s'.

* [[Audience Participation Song]]: "We Will Rock You", "We Are the Champions" and "Radio Ga Ga" spring to mind, though this works with a lot of their output. Freddie left the first lines of "I Want to Break Free" to the audience, and he himself explicitly stated that "Love of My Life" had been "turned into a duet" with the audience as early as the ''Live Killers'' album. And then there's the obligatory singing "contests" Freddie had with his audience, where he sang a sequence of notes, and the audience had to match it. On the ''Live Killers'' album, Freddie himself commented it with "You buggers can sing higher than I can, I tell you". Brian May and Roger Taylor imagine that songs like "I Want It All" and "The Miracle" [[What Could Have Been|could have ended up like this as well]] if Freddie hadn't become too ill for the band to keep touring.

** My God, the Live Aid appearance!

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* [[Camp]]: The video for the operatic ''It's A Hard Life'' takes it [[Up to Eleven]]. It features Freddie Mercury dressed in a costume that looks like a giant prawn, John Deacon and Roger Taylor wearing tights, ruffs and doublets and Brian May playing a guitar made of a skull and crossbones and a random [[Foot Focus]] shot between Freddie and his girlfriend at the time, all surrounded by a crowd of elaborately-costumed, [[Large Ham|ultra-hammy]] extras dressed like opera characters in period costumes. John Deacon also has a Unicorn head on a stick for some reason.

* [[Cargo Ship]]: "I'm in Love with my Car", on ''A Night at the Opera'' is a [[In-Universe|canon]] example:

{{quote| ''When my hand's on your [[Is That What ~~Theyre~~ Calling It Now|grease gun]]''<br />

{{quote| ''When my hand's on your [[Is That What They're Calling It Now?|grease gun]]''<br />

''[[Ho Yay|Oh, it's like a]] [[Harsher in Hindsight|disease]], son'' }}

* [[Carpet of Virility]]: Freddie had quite a bit of manly chest hair.

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** Neither is "Father to Son."

** Here's a big one. The "no synthesizers" disclaimers that appeared on Queen's albums [[Captain Obvious|(until they started using synthesizers)]] weren't a sign of their hatred for synthesizers; the disclaimer was usually put at the end of the credits for each album. As one of Queen's former managers said, [http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1995_articles/oct95/queen.html "We would spend four days multi-layering a guitar solo and then some imbecile from the record company would come in and say,] [[Berserk Button|'I like that synth!'"]]

* [[~~Its~~ All About Me]]: ''Bohemian Rhapsody''.

* [[It's All About Me]]: ''Bohemian Rhapsody''.

* [[The Jimmy Hart Version]]: "Another One Bites The Dust" is this of the disco band Chic's "Good Times". Chic's Bernard Edwards says that John Deacon, the song's writer, hung out at their studio, leading to this song.

* [[Kindhearted Cat Lover]]: Freddie adored cats, and even wrote two good-bye songs for his own felines before he died.

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** "Delilah" is an ode to one of Freddie's cats, who "make(s) (Freddie) slightly mad" when she "pee(s) all over (his) Chippendale Suite".

* [[The Musical]]: ''[[We Will Rock You]]'', surprisingly good for being a jukebox musical but then it helps to have Queen music period.

* [[Non Appearing Title]]: "Bohemian Rhapsody"

* [[Non-Appearing Title]]: "Bohemian Rhapsody"

* [[Non Indicative Name]]: ''Jazz''. The songs on the album draw from a variety of musical styles, like most Queen albums, but there's nothing on it even remotely resembling jazz.

* [[Non-Indicative Name]]: ''Jazz''. The songs on the album draw from a variety of musical styles, like most Queen albums, but there's nothing on it even remotely resembling jazz.

* [[Pop Star Composer]]: Queen wrote songs for ''The Highlander'', ''Flash Gordon the Movie'', and Freddie contributed to a new edition of ''Metropolis''.

** Brian also wrote the soundtrack to a French movie called ''Furia''. It sounds like he was chained to a copy of John Williams' ''[[Star Wars]]'' soundtrack.

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* [[Reality Subtext]]: Many of the songs from ''Innuendo'' and ''Made in Heaven'' were clearly inspired by Freddie's struggle with AIDS.

* [[Reclusive Artist]]: Freddie was one to a certain extent. In contrast to his famously outgoing stage persona, he was quite introverted when he wasn't performing, giving few interviews in comparison to Brian and Roger and mostly keeping to himself (it wasn't publicly revealed that he had AIDS, much less that he was dying, until a day before his death). Since 1997, John has retreated from the music business and public view completely, with only the very occasional picture of him surfacing.

* [[Refuge in Audacity]]: "Fat Bottomed Girls". And the promotional stunts of the era, [[Ms. Fanservice|with 50 naked women riding bicycles]]. And to top it off, the outrageous (and outrageously expensive), [[Sex Drugs and Rock And Roll|cocaine-fueled]] promotional party Freddie held in New Orleans to promote the ''Jazz'' album.

* [[Refuge in Audacity]]: "Fat Bottomed Girls". And the promotional stunts of the era, [[Ms. Fanservice|with 50 naked women riding bicycles]]. And to top it off, the outrageous (and outrageously expensive), [[Sex, Drugs and Rock And Roll|cocaine-fueled]] promotional party Freddie held in New Orleans to promote the ''Jazz'' album.

** Let us not forget "Tie Your Mother Down," a song about getting a high school girl's (at least, we ''assume'' she's in high school) disapproving family out of the way in order to have sex with her.

** Legend had it that when [[The Sex Pistols (Music)|The Sex Pistols]] were recording in Wessex Studios at the same time as Queen in 1977, [[Sid Vicious]] visited them, taunting them with, "Bringing ballet to the masses, eh, Freddie?". Freddie responded with "Ah, Mr. Ferocious! Well, we're trying our best, dear."

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* [[Self Backing Vocalist]]: Their trademark was to massively overdub their vocals to create a choral effect.

** Depending on the song, they could have only Freddie ("Love of My Life"), only Brian ("Leaving Home Ain't Easy"), only Roger ("Tenement Funster"), Freddie + Brian ("All Dead, All Dead"), Freddie + Roger ("Rock It"), Brian + Roger ("Long Away") or the three of them ("Somebody to Love"). Sometimes they even sang each part (alto, tenor, baritone) together in order to make the resulting bounce sound ''really'' big.

* [[Self Deprecation]]: They all played other instruments besides their main one, but were usually more than modest about it. Freddie often half-joked on stage that he could only play three chords on guitar, Brian called his own piano skills "sub-par", Roger (in the 80's) said his voice was getting worse with every passing day, John was often shy about his own abilities on other instruments or when it came to songwriting (lyrics in particular, Freddie too) and said he never sang on any albums because he felt he couldn't compete vocally with the other three.

* [[Self-Deprecation]]: They all played other instruments besides their main one, but were usually more than modest about it. Freddie often half-joked on stage that he could only play three chords on guitar, Brian called his own piano skills "sub-par", Roger (in the 80's) said his voice was getting worse with every passing day, John was often shy about his own abilities on other instruments or when it came to songwriting (lyrics in particular, Freddie too) and said he never sang on any albums because he felt he couldn't compete vocally with the other three.

** Freddie famously replied to a question about how he functioned as an artist with "I'm not an artist, I'm just a musical prostitute, my dear"

* [[Seventies Hair]]: Brian May has kept his for more than forty years.

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* [[Siamese Twin Songs]]: "We Will Rock You" and "We are the Champions".

* [[Sixth Ranger]]: Spike Edney was the band's touring keyboardist in the 1980s (when Freddie decided he wanted to spend more time moving about and interacting with the audience) and also provided additional guitars and backing vocals. He was sometimes referred to as the band's fifth member, and has since played with Brian and Roger in the solo projects as well as with Queen+Paul Rodgers.

* [[~~Sopranoand~~ Gravel]]: Done occasionally, expecially with their more operatic songs like "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Seven Seas of Rhye", with Freddie alternating between a harsh, growling tenor and a clean, piercing falsetto. Within the band itself, in contrast to Freddie and Brian, Roger frequently deployed a much harsher, snarlier voice, closer to really angry [[Pink Floyd (Music)|Roger Waters]] ("Fight from the Inside" is clear proof of this, or "Fun It" - it's really easy to tell Freddie and Roger apart there).

* [[Soprano and Gravel]]: Done occasionally, expecially with their more operatic songs like "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Seven Seas of Rhye", with Freddie alternating between a harsh, growling tenor and a clean, piercing falsetto. Within the band itself, in contrast to Freddie and Brian, Roger frequently deployed a much harsher, snarlier voice, closer to really angry [[Pink Floyd (Music)|Roger Waters]] ("Fight from the Inside" is clear proof of this, or "Fun It" - it's really easy to tell Freddie and Roger apart there).

* [[Spiritual Successor]]: Freddie Mercury wrote ''It's A Hard Life'' as a direct sequel to ''Play the Game'' and ''Somebody To Love'', a sweeping rock opera to follow up ''Bohemian Rhapsody''. The album ''Hot Space'' was meant to be a spiritual successor to the massive success of the [[Funk]]-influenced ''Another One Bites the Dust'', although its [[Your Mileage May Vary|success was debatable]].

** Let's not forget that the opening lines of ''It's a Hard Life'' share a significant snippet of melody with ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0PMq4XGtZ4&t=1m58s Vesti la Giubba]'' from Leoncavallo's ''[[Pagliacci]].''

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** "Scandal" is a take that against the celebrity-obsessed media, who were giving both Freddie (over his health problems, resulting in a picture of him looking haggard and emaciated on the front page of ''The Sun'') and Brian (over his divorce and subsequent marriage to actress [[Eastenders|Anita Dobson]]) a hard time in the late eighties.

** "We Are the Champions" was described by Freddie as being a "take that" directed to the music press, which almost always gave the band horrendous reviews (ex: Rolling Stone describing Queen as "the first fascist rock band" etc.) yet they continued to be one of the world's most popular and best selling bands. When the rest of the band heard Freddie do the first run-through of the song they "fell our laughing", knowing exactly whom he was slagging.

** And then there's "Death On Two Legs (Dedicated to...)", a SCATHING attack on their former manager Norman Sheffield. On the ''Live Killers'' version, Freddie ramped it up a bit more by saying it was dedicated to "a [[Precision F Strike|motherfucker]] of a gentleman". "Flick of the Wrist", from the preceding album is written along the same lines, and reputedly directed at the same [[Precision F Strike|motherfucker]].

** And then there's "Death On Two Legs (Dedicated to...)", a SCATHING attack on their former manager Norman Sheffield. On the ''Live Killers'' version, Freddie ramped it up a bit more by saying it was dedicated to "a [[Precision F-Strike|motherfucker]] of a gentleman". "Flick of the Wrist", from the preceding album is written along the same lines, and reputedly directed at the same [[Precision F-Strike|motherfucker]].

*** It's a full-blown [[The Reason You Suck Speech|Reason You Suck Song]].

*** It's a full-blown [["The Reason You Suck" Speech|Reason You Suck Song]].

** "Fight From The Inside" and "Sheer Heart Attack" (both written by Roger) are [[Take That|Take Thats]] at the then-emerging punk scene.

* [[Talks Like a Simile]]: "Don't Stop Me Now."

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* [[Villain Protagonist]]: "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Put Out The Fire" & "Tie Your Mother Down" all qualify to some extent. "Tie Your Mother Down" seems harmless enough, locking the girl's father out of the house and tying down her mother is one thing, but the line "take your little brother swimming with a brick" pushes it over the line into this.

* [[Villain Song]]: "Gimme the Prize [[Highlander (Film)|(Kurgan's Theme)]]"

* [[Was It Really Worth It]]...? / [[Worth It]] : The gist of the closing song from The Miracle, known as 'Was It All Worth It?'. According to the band, despite all the effort and heartache they put into it all, even after they knew that Freddie had AIDS, 'It was a Worthwhile Experience!'

* [[Was It Really Worth It?]]...? / [[Worth It]] : The gist of the closing song from The Miracle, known as 'Was It All Worth It?'. According to the band, despite all the effort and heartache they put into it all, even after they knew that Freddie had AIDS, 'It was a Worthwhile Experience!'

* [[Wasted Song]]: Their version of "New York, New York", which can be heard on ''Highlander'' never got a full version recording (they only recorded it partially, to match scene it plays on; Kurgan's drive through New York).

** Also, it's never been released, except as a snippet on the movie itself.