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Queen was one of the most audacious, ambitious and accomplished bands in rock history, with the musical reach of an orchestra and the brute force of a nuclear bomb. The main elements of the British ensemble’s sonic signature: singer Freddie Mercury’s operatic delivery, guitarist Brian May’s virtuosic, octave-stacking mix of creamy heraldry and metallic bite, and the foursome’s impeccable vocal harmonies. Queen embraced gale-force rock, cheeky glam-pop, winsome folk, Broadway-style balladry, music-hall camp and, when the mood struck them, everything from disco to rockabilly with staggering finesse – yet no matter the style, the sound was always unmistakably Queen.
Freddie Mercury’s flamboyance and Olympian vocal prowess, as well as the band’s seemingly unlimited dexterity, earned them a substantial following in the first few years of their career. But it was 1975’s A Night at the Opera that made them superstars. Leading the album’s charge was the groundbreaking, unprecedented single “Bohemian Rhapsody” – a multi-part suite of sprawling length that tumbled from forlorn piano ballad to thundering riff-rock to soaring pomp anthem, all while limning the melodrama of a condemned murderer. To radio programmers bred on three-minute love songs with simple verse-chorus-verse structures, it might as well have been Martian music. Despite their misgivings, it became one of the most resounding, rock hits of all time.
The remainder of the decade saw a spate of Queen hits dominating the charts: the thundering double bill of “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions," both of which are probably igniting a crowd at a sporting event somewhere in the world as you read this; the gospel-ish "Somebody to Love"; the salacious "Fat Bottomed Girls"; the rockabilly-derived "Crazy Little Thing Called Love"; the funkified "Another One Bites the Dust"; the shamelessly silly "Radio Ga-Ga"; and many more besides.
Queen’s dominion continued through the first half of the ’80s. Though their hits became fewer and farther between as the decade wore on, the band continued pushing into new territory until Mercury’s death (of complications from AIDS) in 1991. A 1992 tribute concert at London’s Wembley Stadium, with May, Deacon and Taylor backing an all-star lineup of guest singers, only emphasized how irreplaceable Mercury truly was. Yet Queen’s place in the rock pantheon remains unquestioned – they raised the bar so high, in fact, that all most other artists can do is kneel. |
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