Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
Moved page to the Music namespace.
Changed line(s) 1,256 (click to see context) from:
[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/queen_band.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:''I see a little silhouetto of a man...'']]
->''"We are a very competitive group. We are four good writers and there are no passengers."''
-->-- '''Freddie Mercury''' as quoted in the ''Freddie Mercury Solo Collection''
Famous British rock band fronted by Freddie Mercury (vocals, piano and other keyboards), with Brian May (guitar, vocals and keyboards), Roger Taylor (drums, vocals, also guitar and bass on studio recordings) and John Deacon (bass, keyboards and guitar on some studio recordings), known for their style which combines hard rock, massed vocal harmonies (from Mercury, May and Taylor; Deacon only supplied backing vocals live), Brian May's complex, intricately arranged and highly overdubbed guitar work, catchy pop melodies, surreal humour and flamboyant, theatrical performances (which the band was steered towards chiefly by Mercury).
All members of the band were songwriters, approaching [[NeoclassicalPunkZydecoRockabilly wildly different styles]], from straight-up HardRock, GlamRock, ProgressiveRock, HeavyMetal, disco[=/=]{{Funk}}, pop, rockabilly, NewWave and SynthPop, going all the way between 1 and 7 on the MohsScaleOfRockAndMetalHardness. While all bandmembers shared an eclectic approach to songwriting and a tendency for experiments, generally speaking:
* Mercury was responsible for many of their ballads ("Love of My Life", "My Melancholy Blues"), pop songs and stylistic experiments ("Killer Queen", "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Somebody to Love" etc.).
* If you're headbanging to an incredibly guitar-heavy HardRock tune it's probably been written by May ("Prophet's Song", "Tie Your Mother Down", "We Will Rock You")
* If the song is more old school rock-ish and its lyrics deal with things like rebellion, passion, living a life outside the rules etc., it was probably penned by Taylor ("Tenement Funster", "I'm in Love with My Car", "Sheer Heart Attack", "Fight from the Inside").
* The other band members have observed that Deacon was less influenced by bands like LedZeppelin or TheWho than the rest of them and had preferred {{Music/Soul}} and American {{Funk}} music in his youth. As a result a lot of his songs have a kind of Motown pop style ("You're My Best Friend", "Misfire") or a funky, bass-driven sound ("Another One Bites the Dust"). He also wrote several ballads, including "Spread Your Wings", "You and I" and "Friends Will Be Friends" (the last one in collaboration with Freddie, with whom he also co-wrote "The Miracle").
* Songs that combine several of these elements were often writing collaborations.
The band was formed in 1970, and technically ceased to exist after Mercury died of AIDS in 1991. Unwilling to continue without a key member, the band stopped all activity besides a posthumous album with Mercury's previously recorded vocals and one single in 1997. Deacon officially retired from the band soon afterwards. May and Taylor have continued to record and tour in collaboration with other musicians under the "Queen + ..." moniker, which resulted in one album with Paul Rodgers as singer. The album was greeted with critical disdain and a fan backlash over the perceived nature of Rodgers as a ReplacementScrappy, despite May and Taylor repeatedly pointing out that he was only a featured artist and not a replacement for Mercury. Rodgers parted with the band in 2009.
They have many well-known songs. Here's a few of them:
* "[[http://www.mtvmusic.com/queen/videos/18187/bohemian_rhapsody.jhtml Bohemian Rhapsody]]" Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality...
** BohemianParody is a trope that covers all the countless covers and parodies of this music piece.
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN_HVup9oOg You're My Best Friend]]", probably best known recently for appearing at the end of ''ShaunOfTheDead''.
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgzGwKwLmgM Don't Stop Me Now]]", like the song above, is best known for being an important element of the pub scene in ''ShaunOfTheDead''. Tonight, I'm going to have myself a real good time. I feel aliiiiii-iiiiiii-iiiiiii-iiiiiiiive. Voted the greatest driving song ever by the viewers of ''TopGear''.
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tJYN-eG1zk We Will Rock You]]" (Weeeee will, weeee will rock you! <STOMP STOMP CLAP> <STOMP STOMP CLAP>)and "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sogKUx_q7ig We Are The Champions]]"(WEEEEEEEE ARE THE CHAMPIONS, MY FRIENDS.) (Dual A-side, commonly played one after another on the radio)
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS4_Z84-rRE Flash]]" (ThemeTune to the 1980 ''FlashGordon'' movie) with samples of [[BrianBlessed BRIAN BLESSED]]. FLASH! AAAAAAHHHHHHHH-AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH! SAVIOR OF THE UNIVERSE!
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Jtpf8N5IDE Who Wants To Live Forever]]", used, among others, for ''{{Highlander}}''. Not to mention [[WhoWantsToLiveForever it is]] a TropeNamer.
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnrXiaPVeHY Princes Of The Universe]]", the main theme for ''{{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]]"
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEI4U5KyAS0 Radio Ga Ga]]", which gave its name to [[LadyGaga a certain pop singer]] in 2009.
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY0WxgSXdEE Another One Bites The Dust]]": Their best-selling single.
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO6D_BAuYCI Crazy Little Thing Called Love]]"
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtrEN-YKLBM Under Pressure]]", the vastly famous collaboration between Queen and DavidBowie.
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEbEMjKitA4 Fat Bottomed Girls]]", an unofficial anthem for {{BBW}}s the world over.
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zqct2SGoDE0 The Show Must Go On]]", used spectacularly by [[{{DCComics}} Flash Rogue Pied Piper]] in CountdownToFinalCrisis to stop [=OMAC=]/Brother Eye and virtually NUKE the planet Apokolips.
* ''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiot1P3-Hng I Was Born To Love You]]''
* ''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eM8Ss28zjcE&feature=related I Want To Break Free]]'', which was a huge hit in Britain but barely heard in America thanks to the video being [[BannedInChina banned]]. (Whether it was the ballerinas in skintight leotards performing an erotic modern dance, or [[WholesomeCrossdresser all four members of the band appearing in drag]], remains a mystery for the ages.)
Discography:
* 1973 - ''[[SelfTitledAlbum Queen]]''
* 1974 - ''Queen II''
* 1974 - ''Sheer Heart Attack''
* 1975 - ''A Night at the Opera''
* 1976 - ''A Day at the Races''
* 1977 - ''News of the World''
* 1978 - ''Jazz''
* 1980 - ''FlashGordon'' (official soundtrack to the film)
* 1980 - ''The Game''
* 1982 - ''Hot Space''
* 1984 - ''The Works''
* 1986 - ''A Kind of Magic'' (an unofficial ''{{Highlander}}'' soundtrack, with 6 out of 9 songs from the movie and three new songs)
* 1989 - ''The Miracle''
* 1991 - ''Innuendo'' (last album recorded by the band)
* 1995 - ''Made in Heaven'' (posthumous album with Freddie's vocals and piano, last album released by the band)
* 2008 - ''The Cosmos Rocks'' (credited to Queen + Paul Rodgers)
----
!!This band contains examples of:
* AllDrummersAreAnimals: Roger Taylor probably cultivated the hardest rocking image in the group.
* AllStarCast: 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, [[WhatCouldHaveBeen 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.
* AmbiguouslyBrown: Freddie. His real name was Farrokh Bulsara, and he was born in Zanzibar, East Africa to Parsi parents, and went to boarding school in Bombay, India. According to TheOtherWiki, he was named one of the 60 most influential Asian heroes of the last 60 years.
* AmbiguouslyGay: Also Freddie. He rarely to never came out and admitted his sexuality, but he was able to get much [[GettingCrapPastTheRadar past the radar]] (the {{Leatherman}} look of the late seventies, and the HardGay "clone" look of TheEighties comes to mind) until his death. Queen's image combined the fey and the macho even after the "glitter rock" phase of TheSeventies.
** He was probably bisexual, with the exception of the "daffodil" quote, he identified himself as bi, and had both male and female partners (although seemed to be more into men than women.)
* {{American Accents}}: Freddie claims to have one during the 1986 Wembley concert, and asks the audience if they like it. [[EstrogenBrigadeBait It's]] [[EvenTheGuysWantHim pretty]] [[StupidSexyFlanders good]].
* TheApartheidEra: The band got a lot of heat for playing the Sun City resort in South Africa during apartheid.
* AStormIsComing: "The Prophet's Song", based on the Biblical story of Noah.
* AudienceParticipationSong: "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" [[WhatCouldHaveBeen 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!
* AuthorExistenceFailure: Freddie died a tragic death from AIDS. He kept it a closely guarded secret and only went public with it less than 24 hours before his death. It has to be said though that there were quite a few hints in their songs and in the fact that Freddie hadn't appeared in any music video since These Are the Days of Our Lives.
* BadassBoast: "Princes of The Universe", "Gimme the Prize", "We Are the Champions" (no time for losers) and "Seven Seas of Rhye".
** The lyrics also contain bits of AGodAmI. Given that the first two are from ''{{Highlander}}'' this should not be surprising.
*** Khashoggi's Ship, for the six of us who've heard it. Just partying with a famous arms dealer, gun-wielding giants be damned . . .
* BadassMustache: Freddie Mercury.
* BerserkButton: Brian and Roger's commentary for ''Queen Rock Montreal'' reveals that, at this point, Freddie was emphatically ''not'' pleased about making a concert film, didn't really get on with the director and thought the cameramen were getting in the way. Since the plan was to take footage from both nights' shows, he [[BoredOnBoard tried to make a mess of that by wearing trousers on one night and shorts on the second]].
** Freddie got really annoyed at one concert when fans showed up with banners that read [[DeaderThanDisco DISCO SUCKS]] after the release of Hot Space. "It's only a bloody record for Christ's sake, people get so excited"
* BeyondTheImpossible: During the video for Princes of the Universe, Connor [=MacLeod=] from {{Highlander}} challenges Freddie Mercury to a swordfight. The duel ends in a DRAW. Think about that for a second...
** Add in that Freddie is fighting with the microphone stand.
** For some, Roger Taylor and his high notes are BeyondTheImpossible. Exhibit A: Opening notes of "Somebody to Love." Exhibit B: "For MEEEEE!" from ''Bohemian Rhapsody''... And he could get even higher than that: ''Seaside Rendezvous'' has a high C, and his collaboration with British band Fox features him singing (without studio trickery) a tritone HIGHER than 'for me'. Conveniently, the word he's singing during that note is indeed 'higher'."I'm In Love With My Car" features him singing a high E in full voice; it was one of the few he sang on his own in live performances and without any apparent effort.
*** Roger's vocals in live performances in general. How many drummers do know you that can sing and play drums AT THE SAME TIME?
** And if you think that's ridiculous, "It's Late" puts both to shame.
** [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vK8pxoxgNI In the Lap of the Gods.]] The shrieks are Taylor's, and he could pull them off live.
** "Brighton Rock" features Freddie singing mostly in falsetto.
** That one note Freddie hits in the middle of "Under Pressure". Wow!
** Their performance at Wembley Stadium during Live Aid 1985. Freddie somehow got ''75,000 people'' to clap in unison during the refrain of "Radio Ga-Ga". (It must be seen to be believed, so go see it.)
*** (What I always thought was amazing about that performance was the visual representation of the actual speed of sound. Everyone in the crowd "clap-claps" on beat, but since the crowd itself was so *HUGE*, you could actually see a "wave" passing over the crowd as each row clapped a millisecond later than the one before as the sound reached THEIR ears. It's shiver-worthy once you realize that's what's happening.)
** Brian May has stated that Freddie composed "Ogre Battle" on an acoustic guitar, and counts that as a personal BeyondTheImpossible moment.
** On ''A Night At The Opera'', the "brass" and "woodwinds" on "Seaside Rendezvous" are, respectively, Roger and Freddie's ''vocals'', sped up or slowed down on tape. And the temperance jazz band on "Good Company" come entirely from Brian May's ''guitar''. No synthesizers, no samplers, no guitar synthesizers. 16-track analog tape.
** The overdubs on "Bohemian Rhapsody" were so multilayered (again, on ''sixteen-track analog tape'') that you could see through sections of the tape.
* BigBeautifulWoman: "Fat-Bottomed Girls"
* {{Bishonen}}: All of them when younger.
** Subverted in that, even then, Freddie had PermaStubble.
* BlackSheepHit: To some extent, "Another One Bites the Dust", a funk song that was pretty much written because it was the particular style John happened to enjoy. In Britain it was a hit during a period when everything they released shot up the charts, so it generally passed without any particular comment. In America, it's their most successful song and ended up dictating the sound their next album would follow.
* BoringButPractical: Brian May's method for supplying the harp parts on ''A Night At The Opera''. Since he couldn't actually play the instrument, he recorded each note separately and edited them together to get the chords he wanted.
* {{Camp}}: The video for the operatic ''It's A Hard Life'' takes it UpToEleven. 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 FootFocus shot between Freddie and his girlfriend at the time, all surrounded by a crowd of elaborately-costumed, [[LargeHam ultra-hammy]] extras dressed like opera characters in period costumes. John Deacon also has a Unicorn head on a stick for some reason.
* CareerResurrection: They hadn't exactly fallen into obscurity by that point, but people were starting to regard Queen as old hat and past their prime... until [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDckgX3oU_w&feature=related Live Aid]], that is.
* CargoShip: "I'm in Love with my Car", on ''A Night at the Opera'' is a [[{{In-Universe}} canon]] example:
--> ''When my hand's on your [[IsThatWhatTheyreCallingItNow grease gun]]''
--> ''[[HoYay Oh, it's like a]] [[HarsherInHindsight disease]], son''
* CarpetOfVirility: Freddie had quite a bit of manly chest hair.
* CharacterDevelopment: ''It's A Hard Life''. It starts off with the singer dramatically announcing there's no reason to go on in life after a break-up, then within his mourning, he realizes how much effort lasting relationships take throughout the song. At the last chorus, the lyrics have changed to a more optimistic outlook, as he moves on without regret, instead reflecting back on the break-up as a lesson learned in life.
* ChristmasRushed: A failed example. ''Innuendo'' was supposed to be avaliable for Christmas 1990, but was delayed because of Freddie Mercury's health. It was eventually released in February of 1991, nine months before Mercury's death.
* ClothesMakeTheLegend: Freddie's white slacks and yellow jacket.
** The [[CarpetOfVirility chest-exposing]] checkerboard leotards from 1976-1978 are also iconic.
* ContinuityNod: ''Love of My Life'' has "when I get older I will be there at your side to remind you how I still love you, I still love you". Sixteen years later, ''These Are the Days of Our Lives'' (by a different songwriter though) has an older (and dying) Freddie singing "when I look and I find, I still love you... I still love you." The video makes it all even more tearful, as it was Freddie's last.
** "Seaside Rendezvous" from ''A Night At The Opera'' has "I love you madly", while "Was It All Worth It" from ''The Miracle'' has "We love you madly".
** "Fat Bottomed Girls" and "Bicycle Race" (both released on one single) reference each other; "Bicycle Race" features ''"Fat Bottomed Girls will be riding today,"'' and "Fat Bottomed Girls" has ''"Get on your bikes and ride!"''
** The opening track from ''Jazz'' ("Let Me Entertain You") includes the lyric, "We'll Breakfast at Tiffany's / We'll sing to you in Japanese" as a reference to the song "Teo Toriatte" from the "A Day at the Races" album (which had a chorus sung in phonetic Japanese).
** The symmetrical group image featured in the cover of ''Queen II'' (and on the profile pic) was frequently used in videos, including "Bohemian Rhapsody" and an updated one in "One Vision".
* CoverVersion: They never actually recorded any cover songs on their albums, but they performed plenty of cover songs during live shows. Examples include "[[ElvisPresley Jailhouse Rock]]" on ''Queen Rock Montreal'' and a medley of "[[RickyNelson Hello Mary Lou]]", "[[Music/LeiberAndStoller You're So Square]]", "[[LittleRichard Tutti Frutti]]" and "[[TheSpencerDavisGroup Gimme Some Lovin']]" on ''Live At Wembley''.
* CreatorBacklash: The aforementioned "It's a Hard Life" video? May isn't a big fan of it and Taylor outright hates it, calling it "the worst music video ever" on the ''Greatest Hits 2'' commentary. They've both admitted loving the song, though.
** Taylor also admitted in a recent documentary that it was the most fun he had on a video shoot. He just doesn't like the finished product.
** Both Deacon and Taylor publicly panned ''Jazz'' and ''Hot Space''. The latter was defended by May (who claims that without it there'd have been no ''Thriller'' - MichaelJackson agreed that their album was an influence on him) and Mercury (whose debut solo album is basically a ''Hot Space'' II).
** Brian May hates Don't Stop Me Now.
*** In a recent documentary about Queen Brian said he actually kind of liked Don't Stop Me Now
** Freddie was not pleased with the sound of the Wurlitzer electric piano, which John insisted on playing on "You're My Best Friend". Freddie preferred the sound of the acoustic piano. He still loved the song itself, though
** It took lots of fighting and arguing before finally deciding to add a guitar solo to the song "Back Chat", mostly because John Deacon, the composer, wanted to eliminate every possible rock element from this song.
* CreatorBreakdown: Most of ''Innuendo'' is about Freddie coming to terms with his illness and eventual death, particularly "These Are the Days of Our Lives" and "I'm Going Slightly Mad".
* ADayInTheLimelight: 1977-1982 concerts featured drummer Roger Taylor singing lead on one song (usually "I'm In Love With My Car") (on which Freddie stuck to piano and backing vocals). Most of their albums usually had one song with Brian singing lead, one song with Roger singing lead, one song with Brian on piano, one song with John Deacon on guitar and (less frequently but still) one or two songs with Roger on guitar and bass in addition to drums.
** Roger had a sort of IAmTheBand moment with "Fight from the Inside", which was entirely recorded by himself on vocals, guitar, bass and drums. Some other of his compositions at that time were almost entirely recorded by him too, with minimal contributions by the other members (generally some guitar noises by Brian)
* DaysOfTheWeekSong: ''Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon'' and ''In Only Seven Days.''
* DeadArtistsAreBetter: It's an unfortunate fact that Queen had their most successful period in America immediately after the death of Freddie Mercury.
* {{Determinator}}: In their commentaries for the music videos from ''The Miracle'' on the ''Greatest Video Hits II'' DVD, Roger Taylor and Brian often comment on how Freddie Mercury put as much energy as he could into making the best possible videos in spite of how fragile his health had become by 1989.
** The story of how vocals to "The Show Must Go On" were recorded is similarly famous:
--> "When Brian May presented the final demo to Mercury, he had doubts that Mercury would be physically capable of singing the song's highly demanding vocal line, due to the extent of his illness at the time. To May's surprise, when the time came to record the vocals, Mercury consumed a measure of vodka and said "I'll fucking do it, darling!" then proceeded to nail the vocal line in one take without problems."
* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The first album sounded more like LedZeppelin than the sound the band became well known for, while the second took their progressive tendencies UpToEleven. They're good albums, but they're pretty different from what the stuff the band was doing after ''Sheer Heart Attack''.
* EightiesHair: John Deacon's afro (seen in the "Radio Ga Ga" video) has to count.
* EpicRiff: Lots, from ''Keep Yourself Alive'' to ''White Man'' to ''Another One Bites The Dust'', an epic bass riff.
* EpicRocking: Particularly prevalent on their first two albums.
* EverythingIsAnInstrument : "Bicycle Race".
* EverythingsBuiltWithLEGO: Lego versions of Queen in Lego RockBand. [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome It is the awesomest thing in the history of awesome]].
** Additionally, several videos are around on the internet of Queen songs with LEGO stop motion animation.
* FadingIntoTheNextSong: Used on several albums. For example, the piano at the end of "The Prophet's Song" fades into the introduction for "Love Of My Life" on ''A Night At The Opera''.
* FirstGirlWins: When the band began, Freddie was dating a beautiful blonde English woman named Mary Austin. They even moved in together for a while and broke up in 1976. After that, Freddie dated many men and women, eventually being domestic partners with an Irish man (who died on 1st January 2010, but not from AIDS). When Freddie died, Mary got half of his fortune (the other half was split between his sister and his parents), including his mansion, his piano, and publishing royalties (which keep growing with every passing day).
* GadgeteerGenius: Brian May holds a [=Ph.D=] in Astrophysics - a real one that he actually studied and wrote a thesis for, not an honorary one as so many celebrates have. He also designed and built his guitar, the Red Special, himself. [[MemeticMutation In a cave! With a box of scraps!]]
** There's a lot of truth to the box of scraps bit. The guitar's neck is mostly a piece of wood salvaged from an old fireplace surround, and the tremolo bar is a motorcycle handbrake combined with a knitting needle.
** John Deacon too, tinkering with electronics in his youth and later graduated with a First in electrical engineering. He joined in part because the others were impressed by his skill with equipment.
* GagBoobs: Freddie, infamously in "I Want to Break Free".
* GenreRoulette: A typical Queen album from TheSeventies might contain elements of heavy metal, hard rock, progressive rock, music-hall numbers, Dixieland jazz, folk, blues-rock, Beatlesque pop-rock, glam-rock and ballads. Later albums would include funk, dance music, synth-pop, punk-rock, rockabilly, reggae and/or new wave influences. Freddie suggested that this was why it took so long (close to fifteen years after Queen began) for Roger and himself to put out the first Queen solo albums; the band was four solo projects that came together to create the Queen sound.
* GrandFinale: There's no denying that "The Show Must Go On" is this.
* GratuitousForeignLanguage: Is there ''really'' any reason for those "Bismillah!"s in Bohemian Rhapsody? And, for that matter, just why is Scaramouche supposed to do the fandango?
** RuleOfCool, naturally.
** [[http://queenwords.com/lyrics/songs/sng07_01.shtml Mustapha]], along with AsLongAsItSoundsForeign.
** Come on, [[http://queenwords.com/lyrics/songs/sng05_10.shtml "Teo Torriatte"]], [[http://queenwords.com/lyrics/songs/sng23_08.shtml "Las Palabras de Amor"]], [[http://queenwords.com/lyrics/songs/sng04_07.shtml "Seaside Rendezvous"]]
** Rather lampshaded in "Let Me Entertain You":
---> Just take a look at the menu
---> We'll give you rock à la carte
---> We'll breakfast at Tiffany's, ''we'll sing to you in Japanese''
---> We're only here to entertain you
* GreatestHitsAlbum: The two main ones - ''Greatest Hits'' and ''Greatest Hits II'' - were released in 1981 and 1991 respectively and collected the hit singles of the preceding decade. A third album, ''Greatest Hits III'', is probably more aptly described as "Greatest Leftovers", consisting mainly of live Queen+ recordings and some remixes.
* HardGay: Freddie. (Or Hard Bi, maybe)
* HeavyMeta: Roger Taylor wrote a few songs about rock music. His first composition for the group, "Modern Times Rock And Roll" was the first and "Radio Ga Ga" was the best known.
* HeavyMithril: Queen's first two albums [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EYUqsfl7gE are loaded]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1j-6vRykFs with this.]]
* HoYay: Freddie Mercury and Roger Taylor: best friends, metrosexuals, exceptionally good with high falsetto vocals, party animals, heavy smokers (at least at some point) and drinkers.
* IAmNotSpock: When Freddie died, Brian tried to make it as a solo artist (i.e. lead singer) and to make a reputation away from Queen. He even summoned a dream-team backing band that included Cozy Powell, Black Sabbath's Neil Murray and (at one point) Rick Wakeman. It didn't work ... fans liked it more when he walked away from the microphone and played guitar solos.
** Roger formed a parallel band in the 80's, where he was the lead singer and rhythm guitarist rather than the drummer. He was extremely annoyed by fans and journalists still thinking of him as the drummer. His solo career also suffered a bit from it.
*** Roger sometimes showed annoyance about being considered only as "the drummer", even with the band Queen. There are some interviews where he introduces himself as "the drummer and one of the vocalists" of the band.
* ICallItVera: Brian May's guitar, "Red Special", which he built from scraps as a teenager.
** Also of note was the amp often used with the Red Special, the "Deacy Amp", built by Electrical Engineer-turned Bassist, John Deacon.
* IconicItem: Freddie's bottomless microphone stand; during a gig very early in the band's career his mic stand snapped in half in the middle of a song, but he carried on with the intact bit and decided it would be more interesting to keep it like that.
* ImportantHaircut: Freddie, Roger and John all had long hair in the 1970s, but then appeared with short hair around the time of ''News of the World'', which represented new directions in the group's style. Freddie's famous mustache, which he grew around the time of ''The Game'' and the Flash Gordon soundtrack, also accompanied changes to Queen's sound. Only Brian May has kept the same haircut (huge, dark and curly) for the past 40 years (one of his conditions for Queen's inclusion in Lego Rock Band was that they portray his hair accurately).
* IntercourseWithYou: Hey, guess what "Get Down, Make Love" [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin is about]].
** Funny, the chorus seems to make it about the lead singer bitching out his girlfriend for being [[AllWomenArePrudes a prude]]...
* InTheStyleOf: "Somebody to Love" is [[InTheStyleOf In the Style of]] ArethaFranklin, who Freddie Mercury was a fan of.
* IronicEcho: "Good Company", with the line "take care of those you call your own and keep good company".
** "Sleeping On The Sidewalk" also has this: "I may get hungry but I sure don't wanna go home/I don't get hungry and I sure don't wanna go home/I may get hungry and I sure do wanna go home"
* IThoughtItMeant: No, "Mother Love" is not about ParentalIncest.
** Neither is "Father to Son."
** Here's a big one. The "no synthesizers" disclaimers that appeared on Queen's albums [[CaptainObvious (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,]] [[BerserkButton 'I like that synth!'"]]
* ItsAllAboutMe: ''Bohemian Rhapsody''.
** [[OrIsIt Or Is It?]]
* TheJimmyHartVersion: "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.
* KindheartedCatLover: Freddie adored cats, and even wrote two good-bye songs for his own felines before he died.
** "All Dead, All Dead" was written because one of Brian May's cats died.
** "Delilah" is aptly titled after Freddie's favorite cat.
* LargeHam: Freddie, as well. Brian also qualifies in some videos, especially the aforementioned "It's a Hard Life" in which he (according to Roger) "Gets dangerously close to acting."
* LongRunnerLineUp, taken to its LogicalExtreme: a LongRunner band (20 years) with only ''one'' lineup: Freddie Mercury, Brian May, John Deacon, and Roger Taylor.
** Except for the recent Queen + Paul Something or Another thing.
* LyricalDissonance: "I Want to Break Free" is ''not'' a happy song, but has a catchy, upbeat tone.
** Unless it actually is a happy song and you're looking at it from the wrong angle. (Queen songs are not always about anything specific.)
** There's also "Don't Try Suicide," which is about [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin pretty much what you'd expect]], but sounds like a reject from ''WestSideStory''.
** Hell, Queen have this all over the place. "Bring Back That Leroy Brown", "Misfire", "'39", "Somebody to Love"...
** "One Vision" sounds like an upbeat, inspirational song, until you realize the lyrics are about [[PuttingOnTheReich fascism]]...
*** Critics at the time had always equated Queen with fascism, due to the hold Freddie had over the audience coming as one, and due to the critics' dismissal of the kind of arena rock Queen did so well. WordOfGod mentions that One Vision (wel, apart from the "[[RuleOfFunny fried chicken]]" line) is about MartinLutherKingJr.
* MetalScream: "In the Lap of the Gods" has a lot of them. Roger Taylor used to perform them live at every concert just to prove they weren't synthesized.
* MindScrew: Applies to a lot of their early and later work. Don't even pretend Bohemian Rhapsody makes sense.
** It sounds like the story of a murder trial. Seriously, it's not that hard.
*** A Guitar World special edition magazine interviewed Freddie's assistant, Peter Freestone, who suggested it might be about Freddie coming to terms with his newfound sexuality, and fearing breaking the news to his then-girlfriend, Mary Austin.
** "39" ''does'' make sense, but seems not to. It helps to know the back story.
*** Seriously. Best song about theoretical Einsteinian space travel-induced time dilation masquerading as a sea shanty [[http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A733619 EVER.]]
* MohsScaleOfRockAndMetalHardness: All the way from 1 to 7.
* TheMusical: ''WeWillRockYou'', surprisingly good for being a jukebox musical but then it helps to have Queen music period.
* NamesTheSame: Roger Taylor sometimes goes by Roger Meddows-Taylor to distinguish himself from the Roger Taylor who played drums in DuranDuran.
** There is a separate Brian May, an Australian who composes [[MadMax film scores]].
* NonIndicativeName: ''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.
* ThePeteBest: Original bassist Tim Staffell.
* PopStarComposer: Queen wrote songs for ''The Highlander'', ''Flash Gordon the Movie'', and 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' ''StarWars'' soundtrack.
** Brian also did the soundtrack for the RiseOfTheRobots fighting game. It was far more epic than the game was.
* ThePowerOfFriendship: Celebrated in "Friends Will Be Friends".
* PornStache: Freddie, during the 80s.
* PosthumousCollaboration: Deliberate on Freddie's part for ''Made in Heaven''. Freddie recorded as many vocals as he could for the band to work with, but they still had to dig deeper than that to make a full album. For example, Brian sings the last verse of "Mother Love" because Freddie didn't finish his vocal.
** And a lot of Freddie's vocal and piano work ''Made in Heaven'' comes from long before 1991. All in all, only three songs are actually written and completely recorded after ''Innuendo''.
* ProtestSong: "I Want It All" was interpreted both as an anti-apartheid song and as an [=LBGT=] anthem, though neither of those meanings were intended by the band.
** The anti-apartheid interpretation is rather ironic in that Queen was one of the few major groups [[http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2005/jan/14/2http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2005/jan/14/2 not to abide]] with the UN cultural boycott on apartheid South Africa, and they ended up fined and blacklisted. Queen members later argued that they weren't a political group and that the crowd was integrated, MissingThePoint on the policy of deinvestment.
** "I Want To Break Free" was also adopted as an LGBT anthem.
* TheQuietOne: John Deacon, almost literally; he was the only member who didn't sing, and said very little in group interviews, generally only speaking when a question was directed specifically to him. Since the band went their separate ways in 1991, John mostly retired from the music industry, only going back into the studio to record the "No-One But You (Only the Good Die Young)" single. He later gave his support to Queen+Paul Rodgers, but declined to take part.
* ReclusiveArtist: 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.
* RefugeInAudacity: "Fat Bottomed Girls". And the promotional stunts of the era, [[MsFanservice with 50 naked women riding bicycles]]. And to top it off, the outrageous (and outrageously expensive), [[SexDrugsAndRockAndRoll cocaine-fueled]] promotional party they 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 TheSexPistols were recording in an opposite studio to Queen in 1977, SidVicious 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."
* SanitySlippageSong: "I'm Going Slightly Mad".
** Also, the traditional song "Oh I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside" which plays at the end of "Seven Seas of Rhye". At least, this is how the musical ''We Will Rock You'' interpreted it.
* SelfBackingVocalist: 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.
* SelfDeprecation: 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"
* '70sHair: Brian May has kept his for more than forty years.
* ShirtlessScene: Freddie had a few in concerts.
* ShoutOut:
** To the MarxBrothers, the albums ''A Night at the Opera'' and ''A Day at the Races'' taking their names from two of their films.
** The music video for "Calling All Girls" was based upon the GeorgeLucas movie ''Film/{{THX 1138}}''.
** The music video for "Radio Ga Ga" was based upon the FritzLang move ''Metropolis'' - which Freddie supplied a song for in a modern overdub.
** "Bring Back That Leroy Brown" (from ''Sheer Heart Attack'') is an homage to Jim Croce, who had died the previous year.
** The "I Want To Break Free" video is a parody of ''CoronationStreet''.
** The lyrics of "Innuendo" (which were started by Freddie, but were mostly Roger's work) are intended as a shout out to "[[LedZeppelin Kashmir]]".
* SixthRanger: 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.
* SopranoAndGravel: 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 [[PinkFloyd 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).
* SpiritualSuccessor: 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 [[YourMileageMayVary 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}}.''
** More notably, the entirety of ''A Day At The Races'' can be thought of as a "sequel" to ''A Night At The Opera''. They're both named after MarxBrothers films, the album art is almost exactly the same with a black background rather than white, and many of the songs parallel each other. "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Somebody to Love", "'39" and "Long Away", "The Prophet's Song" and "White Man", "You're My Best Friend" and "You and I", and very specifically, both albums open with EpicRiff-driven HardRock tunes ("Death on Two Legs (Dedicated to..." and "Tie Your Mother Down").
* StuffyOldSongsAboutTheButtocks: "Fat-Bottomed Girls".
* SubduedSection: Used in too many of their songs to list.
* {{Synthesizeritis}}: They've done some good tracks with synths after they started using them, but there's just no excuse for ''Hot Space'' (other than "Under Pressure") and ''The Miracle''.
* TakeThat: "Scandal" is a take that against the celebrity-obsessed media, who were giving both Freddie and Brian 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 [[PrecisionFStrike motherfucker]] of a gentleman". "Flick of the Wrist", from the preceding album is written along the same lines, and reputedly directed at the same [[PrecisionFStrike motherfucker]].
*** It's a full-blown [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech Reason You Suck Song]]
** "Fight From The Inside" and "Sheer Heart Attack" (both written by Roger) are [[TakeThat TakeThats]] at the then-emerging punk scene.
* TalksLikeASimile: "Don't Stop Me Now."
* ThreeChordsAndTheTruth: Usually averted, as lots of Queen songs have quite a few more than three chords, and Brian May is highly respected for his virtuosity as a guitarist. However, Freddie Mercury joked about it at the 1986 Wembley concert - "''This shitty guitar never plays the chords I want it to play. It only knows three. Let's see what happens.''" - before launching into "'Crazy Little Thing Called Love"
* UnreliableNarrator: [[CaptainObvious "Liar"]]... [[EveryoneIsJesusInPurgatory Maybe]]...
* UrExample: "Stone Cold Crazy" was one of the earliest HardRock songs not to be interchangeable with BluesRock, and it was a precursor to and big influence on several styles of Metal (Speed Metal and Thrash Metal especially). As mentioned above "Dead On Time" falls in here too.
** {{Metallica}} covered "Stone Cold Crazy", releasing it first as a B-side and then on their all-covers album ''Garage Inc.'' They also played it at the Tribute Concert, cementing its status as Metallica's homage/thank you to the band.
* VillainProtagonist: "Bohemian Rhapsody".
* VillainSong: "Gimme the Prize [[{{Highlander}} (Kurgan's Theme)]]"
* [[WasItReallyWorthIt Was It Really]] / WorthIt : 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!'
* WastedSong: 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.
* WeaponOfChoice: The Red Special for Brian. So much so that when he played on Paul Rodgers' set at the "Strat Pack" concert, which was a tribute to the 50th anniversary of the Fender Stratocaster, Brian brought the Red Special along, theme of the concert be damned.
* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome: Queen and only Queen could write a song about something mundane as riding a bike and make it fucking AWESOME.
** "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".
* WordSaladLyrics: 90% of their songs don't really mean anything, they just sound cool.
** Although that's debatable: some sources say Freddie encouraged their (and especially his) "throwaway lyricist" image to avoid being asked to analyze the words in interviews, but many (or at least several) of them were actually very personal.
* YouAreTheNewTrend: Freddie's look throughout the 80's became the stereotypical look for gays, especially the slicked/coiffed hair, moustache, and hairy chest.
----
[[caption-width-right:350:''I see a little silhouetto of a man...'']]
->''"We are a very competitive group. We are four good writers and there are no passengers."''
-->-- '''Freddie Mercury''' as quoted in the ''Freddie Mercury Solo Collection''
Famous British rock band fronted by Freddie Mercury (vocals, piano and other keyboards), with Brian May (guitar, vocals and keyboards), Roger Taylor (drums, vocals, also guitar and bass on studio recordings) and John Deacon (bass, keyboards and guitar on some studio recordings), known for their style which combines hard rock, massed vocal harmonies (from Mercury, May and Taylor; Deacon only supplied backing vocals live), Brian May's complex, intricately arranged and highly overdubbed guitar work, catchy pop melodies, surreal humour and flamboyant, theatrical performances (which the band was steered towards chiefly by Mercury).
All members of the band were songwriters, approaching [[NeoclassicalPunkZydecoRockabilly wildly different styles]], from straight-up HardRock, GlamRock, ProgressiveRock, HeavyMetal, disco[=/=]{{Funk}}, pop, rockabilly, NewWave and SynthPop, going all the way between 1 and 7 on the MohsScaleOfRockAndMetalHardness. While all bandmembers shared an eclectic approach to songwriting and a tendency for experiments, generally speaking:
* Mercury was responsible for many of their ballads ("Love of My Life", "My Melancholy Blues"), pop songs and stylistic experiments ("Killer Queen", "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Somebody to Love" etc.).
* If you're headbanging to an incredibly guitar-heavy HardRock tune it's probably been written by May ("Prophet's Song", "Tie Your Mother Down", "We Will Rock You")
* If the song is more old school rock-ish and its lyrics deal with things like rebellion, passion, living a life outside the rules etc., it was probably penned by Taylor ("Tenement Funster", "I'm in Love with My Car", "Sheer Heart Attack", "Fight from the Inside").
* The other band members have observed that Deacon was less influenced by bands like LedZeppelin or TheWho than the rest of them and had preferred {{Music/Soul}} and American {{Funk}} music in his youth. As a result a lot of his songs have a kind of Motown pop style ("You're My Best Friend", "Misfire") or a funky, bass-driven sound ("Another One Bites the Dust"). He also wrote several ballads, including "Spread Your Wings", "You and I" and "Friends Will Be Friends" (the last one in collaboration with Freddie, with whom he also co-wrote "The Miracle").
* Songs that combine several of these elements were often writing collaborations.
The band was formed in 1970, and technically ceased to exist after Mercury died of AIDS in 1991. Unwilling to continue without a key member, the band stopped all activity besides a posthumous album with Mercury's previously recorded vocals and one single in 1997. Deacon officially retired from the band soon afterwards. May and Taylor have continued to record and tour in collaboration with other musicians under the "Queen + ..." moniker, which resulted in one album with Paul Rodgers as singer. The album was greeted with critical disdain and a fan backlash over the perceived nature of Rodgers as a ReplacementScrappy, despite May and Taylor repeatedly pointing out that he was only a featured artist and not a replacement for Mercury. Rodgers parted with the band in 2009.
They have many well-known songs. Here's a few of them:
* "[[http://www.mtvmusic.com/queen/videos/18187/bohemian_rhapsody.jhtml Bohemian Rhapsody]]" Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality...
** BohemianParody is a trope that covers all the countless covers and parodies of this music piece.
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN_HVup9oOg You're My Best Friend]]", probably best known recently for appearing at the end of ''ShaunOfTheDead''.
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgzGwKwLmgM Don't Stop Me Now]]", like the song above, is best known for being an important element of the pub scene in ''ShaunOfTheDead''. Tonight, I'm going to have myself a real good time. I feel aliiiiii-iiiiiii-iiiiiii-iiiiiiiive. Voted the greatest driving song ever by the viewers of ''TopGear''.
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tJYN-eG1zk We Will Rock You]]" (Weeeee will, weeee will rock you! <STOMP STOMP CLAP> <STOMP STOMP CLAP>)and "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sogKUx_q7ig We Are The Champions]]"(WEEEEEEEE ARE THE CHAMPIONS, MY FRIENDS.) (Dual A-side, commonly played one after another on the radio)
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS4_Z84-rRE Flash]]" (ThemeTune to the 1980 ''FlashGordon'' movie) with samples of [[BrianBlessed BRIAN BLESSED]]. FLASH! AAAAAAHHHHHHHH-AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH! SAVIOR OF THE UNIVERSE!
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Jtpf8N5IDE Who Wants To Live Forever]]", used, among others, for ''{{Highlander}}''. Not to mention [[WhoWantsToLiveForever it is]] a TropeNamer.
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnrXiaPVeHY Princes Of The Universe]]", the main theme for ''{{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]]"
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEI4U5KyAS0 Radio Ga Ga]]", which gave its name to [[LadyGaga a certain pop singer]] in 2009.
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY0WxgSXdEE Another One Bites The Dust]]": Their best-selling single.
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO6D_BAuYCI Crazy Little Thing Called Love]]"
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtrEN-YKLBM Under Pressure]]", the vastly famous collaboration between Queen and DavidBowie.
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEbEMjKitA4 Fat Bottomed Girls]]", an unofficial anthem for {{BBW}}s the world over.
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zqct2SGoDE0 The Show Must Go On]]", used spectacularly by [[{{DCComics}} Flash Rogue Pied Piper]] in CountdownToFinalCrisis to stop [=OMAC=]/Brother Eye and virtually NUKE the planet Apokolips.
* ''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiot1P3-Hng I Was Born To Love You]]''
* ''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eM8Ss28zjcE&feature=related I Want To Break Free]]'', which was a huge hit in Britain but barely heard in America thanks to the video being [[BannedInChina banned]]. (Whether it was the ballerinas in skintight leotards performing an erotic modern dance, or [[WholesomeCrossdresser all four members of the band appearing in drag]], remains a mystery for the ages.)
Discography:
* 1973 - ''[[SelfTitledAlbum Queen]]''
* 1974 - ''Queen II''
* 1974 - ''Sheer Heart Attack''
* 1975 - ''A Night at the Opera''
* 1976 - ''A Day at the Races''
* 1977 - ''News of the World''
* 1978 - ''Jazz''
* 1980 - ''FlashGordon'' (official soundtrack to the film)
* 1980 - ''The Game''
* 1982 - ''Hot Space''
* 1984 - ''The Works''
* 1986 - ''A Kind of Magic'' (an unofficial ''{{Highlander}}'' soundtrack, with 6 out of 9 songs from the movie and three new songs)
* 1989 - ''The Miracle''
* 1991 - ''Innuendo'' (last album recorded by the band)
* 1995 - ''Made in Heaven'' (posthumous album with Freddie's vocals and piano, last album released by the band)
* 2008 - ''The Cosmos Rocks'' (credited to Queen + Paul Rodgers)
----
!!This band contains examples of:
* AllDrummersAreAnimals: Roger Taylor probably cultivated the hardest rocking image in the group.
* AllStarCast: 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, [[WhatCouldHaveBeen 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.
* AmbiguouslyBrown: Freddie. His real name was Farrokh Bulsara, and he was born in Zanzibar, East Africa to Parsi parents, and went to boarding school in Bombay, India. According to TheOtherWiki, he was named one of the 60 most influential Asian heroes of the last 60 years.
* AmbiguouslyGay: Also Freddie. He rarely to never came out and admitted his sexuality, but he was able to get much [[GettingCrapPastTheRadar past the radar]] (the {{Leatherman}} look of the late seventies, and the HardGay "clone" look of TheEighties comes to mind) until his death. Queen's image combined the fey and the macho even after the "glitter rock" phase of TheSeventies.
** He was probably bisexual, with the exception of the "daffodil" quote, he identified himself as bi, and had both male and female partners (although seemed to be more into men than women.)
* {{American Accents}}: Freddie claims to have one during the 1986 Wembley concert, and asks the audience if they like it. [[EstrogenBrigadeBait It's]] [[EvenTheGuysWantHim pretty]] [[StupidSexyFlanders good]].
* TheApartheidEra: The band got a lot of heat for playing the Sun City resort in South Africa during apartheid.
* AStormIsComing: "The Prophet's Song", based on the Biblical story of Noah.
* AudienceParticipationSong: "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" [[WhatCouldHaveBeen 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!
* AuthorExistenceFailure: Freddie died a tragic death from AIDS. He kept it a closely guarded secret and only went public with it less than 24 hours before his death. It has to be said though that there were quite a few hints in their songs and in the fact that Freddie hadn't appeared in any music video since These Are the Days of Our Lives.
* BadassBoast: "Princes of The Universe", "Gimme the Prize", "We Are the Champions" (no time for losers) and "Seven Seas of Rhye".
** The lyrics also contain bits of AGodAmI. Given that the first two are from ''{{Highlander}}'' this should not be surprising.
*** Khashoggi's Ship, for the six of us who've heard it. Just partying with a famous arms dealer, gun-wielding giants be damned . . .
* BadassMustache: Freddie Mercury.
* BerserkButton: Brian and Roger's commentary for ''Queen Rock Montreal'' reveals that, at this point, Freddie was emphatically ''not'' pleased about making a concert film, didn't really get on with the director and thought the cameramen were getting in the way. Since the plan was to take footage from both nights' shows, he [[BoredOnBoard tried to make a mess of that by wearing trousers on one night and shorts on the second]].
** Freddie got really annoyed at one concert when fans showed up with banners that read [[DeaderThanDisco DISCO SUCKS]] after the release of Hot Space. "It's only a bloody record for Christ's sake, people get so excited"
* BeyondTheImpossible: During the video for Princes of the Universe, Connor [=MacLeod=] from {{Highlander}} challenges Freddie Mercury to a swordfight. The duel ends in a DRAW. Think about that for a second...
** Add in that Freddie is fighting with the microphone stand.
** For some, Roger Taylor and his high notes are BeyondTheImpossible. Exhibit A: Opening notes of "Somebody to Love." Exhibit B: "For MEEEEE!" from ''Bohemian Rhapsody''... And he could get even higher than that: ''Seaside Rendezvous'' has a high C, and his collaboration with British band Fox features him singing (without studio trickery) a tritone HIGHER than 'for me'. Conveniently, the word he's singing during that note is indeed 'higher'."I'm In Love With My Car" features him singing a high E in full voice; it was one of the few he sang on his own in live performances and without any apparent effort.
*** Roger's vocals in live performances in general. How many drummers do know you that can sing and play drums AT THE SAME TIME?
** And if you think that's ridiculous, "It's Late" puts both to shame.
** [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vK8pxoxgNI In the Lap of the Gods.]] The shrieks are Taylor's, and he could pull them off live.
** "Brighton Rock" features Freddie singing mostly in falsetto.
** That one note Freddie hits in the middle of "Under Pressure". Wow!
** Their performance at Wembley Stadium during Live Aid 1985. Freddie somehow got ''75,000 people'' to clap in unison during the refrain of "Radio Ga-Ga". (It must be seen to be believed, so go see it.)
*** (What I always thought was amazing about that performance was the visual representation of the actual speed of sound. Everyone in the crowd "clap-claps" on beat, but since the crowd itself was so *HUGE*, you could actually see a "wave" passing over the crowd as each row clapped a millisecond later than the one before as the sound reached THEIR ears. It's shiver-worthy once you realize that's what's happening.)
** Brian May has stated that Freddie composed "Ogre Battle" on an acoustic guitar, and counts that as a personal BeyondTheImpossible moment.
** On ''A Night At The Opera'', the "brass" and "woodwinds" on "Seaside Rendezvous" are, respectively, Roger and Freddie's ''vocals'', sped up or slowed down on tape. And the temperance jazz band on "Good Company" come entirely from Brian May's ''guitar''. No synthesizers, no samplers, no guitar synthesizers. 16-track analog tape.
** The overdubs on "Bohemian Rhapsody" were so multilayered (again, on ''sixteen-track analog tape'') that you could see through sections of the tape.
* BigBeautifulWoman: "Fat-Bottomed Girls"
* {{Bishonen}}: All of them when younger.
** Subverted in that, even then, Freddie had PermaStubble.
* BlackSheepHit: To some extent, "Another One Bites the Dust", a funk song that was pretty much written because it was the particular style John happened to enjoy. In Britain it was a hit during a period when everything they released shot up the charts, so it generally passed without any particular comment. In America, it's their most successful song and ended up dictating the sound their next album would follow.
* BoringButPractical: Brian May's method for supplying the harp parts on ''A Night At The Opera''. Since he couldn't actually play the instrument, he recorded each note separately and edited them together to get the chords he wanted.
* {{Camp}}: The video for the operatic ''It's A Hard Life'' takes it UpToEleven. 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 FootFocus shot between Freddie and his girlfriend at the time, all surrounded by a crowd of elaborately-costumed, [[LargeHam ultra-hammy]] extras dressed like opera characters in period costumes. John Deacon also has a Unicorn head on a stick for some reason.
* CareerResurrection: They hadn't exactly fallen into obscurity by that point, but people were starting to regard Queen as old hat and past their prime... until [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDckgX3oU_w&feature=related Live Aid]], that is.
* CargoShip: "I'm in Love with my Car", on ''A Night at the Opera'' is a [[{{In-Universe}} canon]] example:
--> ''When my hand's on your [[IsThatWhatTheyreCallingItNow grease gun]]''
--> ''[[HoYay Oh, it's like a]] [[HarsherInHindsight disease]], son''
* CarpetOfVirility: Freddie had quite a bit of manly chest hair.
* CharacterDevelopment: ''It's A Hard Life''. It starts off with the singer dramatically announcing there's no reason to go on in life after a break-up, then within his mourning, he realizes how much effort lasting relationships take throughout the song. At the last chorus, the lyrics have changed to a more optimistic outlook, as he moves on without regret, instead reflecting back on the break-up as a lesson learned in life.
* ChristmasRushed: A failed example. ''Innuendo'' was supposed to be avaliable for Christmas 1990, but was delayed because of Freddie Mercury's health. It was eventually released in February of 1991, nine months before Mercury's death.
* ClothesMakeTheLegend: Freddie's white slacks and yellow jacket.
** The [[CarpetOfVirility chest-exposing]] checkerboard leotards from 1976-1978 are also iconic.
* ContinuityNod: ''Love of My Life'' has "when I get older I will be there at your side to remind you how I still love you, I still love you". Sixteen years later, ''These Are the Days of Our Lives'' (by a different songwriter though) has an older (and dying) Freddie singing "when I look and I find, I still love you... I still love you." The video makes it all even more tearful, as it was Freddie's last.
** "Seaside Rendezvous" from ''A Night At The Opera'' has "I love you madly", while "Was It All Worth It" from ''The Miracle'' has "We love you madly".
** "Fat Bottomed Girls" and "Bicycle Race" (both released on one single) reference each other; "Bicycle Race" features ''"Fat Bottomed Girls will be riding today,"'' and "Fat Bottomed Girls" has ''"Get on your bikes and ride!"''
** The opening track from ''Jazz'' ("Let Me Entertain You") includes the lyric, "We'll Breakfast at Tiffany's / We'll sing to you in Japanese" as a reference to the song "Teo Toriatte" from the "A Day at the Races" album (which had a chorus sung in phonetic Japanese).
** The symmetrical group image featured in the cover of ''Queen II'' (and on the profile pic) was frequently used in videos, including "Bohemian Rhapsody" and an updated one in "One Vision".
* CoverVersion: They never actually recorded any cover songs on their albums, but they performed plenty of cover songs during live shows. Examples include "[[ElvisPresley Jailhouse Rock]]" on ''Queen Rock Montreal'' and a medley of "[[RickyNelson Hello Mary Lou]]", "[[Music/LeiberAndStoller You're So Square]]", "[[LittleRichard Tutti Frutti]]" and "[[TheSpencerDavisGroup Gimme Some Lovin']]" on ''Live At Wembley''.
* CreatorBacklash: The aforementioned "It's a Hard Life" video? May isn't a big fan of it and Taylor outright hates it, calling it "the worst music video ever" on the ''Greatest Hits 2'' commentary. They've both admitted loving the song, though.
** Taylor also admitted in a recent documentary that it was the most fun he had on a video shoot. He just doesn't like the finished product.
** Both Deacon and Taylor publicly panned ''Jazz'' and ''Hot Space''. The latter was defended by May (who claims that without it there'd have been no ''Thriller'' - MichaelJackson agreed that their album was an influence on him) and Mercury (whose debut solo album is basically a ''Hot Space'' II).
** Brian May hates Don't Stop Me Now.
*** In a recent documentary about Queen Brian said he actually kind of liked Don't Stop Me Now
** Freddie was not pleased with the sound of the Wurlitzer electric piano, which John insisted on playing on "You're My Best Friend". Freddie preferred the sound of the acoustic piano. He still loved the song itself, though
** It took lots of fighting and arguing before finally deciding to add a guitar solo to the song "Back Chat", mostly because John Deacon, the composer, wanted to eliminate every possible rock element from this song.
* CreatorBreakdown: Most of ''Innuendo'' is about Freddie coming to terms with his illness and eventual death, particularly "These Are the Days of Our Lives" and "I'm Going Slightly Mad".
* ADayInTheLimelight: 1977-1982 concerts featured drummer Roger Taylor singing lead on one song (usually "I'm In Love With My Car") (on which Freddie stuck to piano and backing vocals). Most of their albums usually had one song with Brian singing lead, one song with Roger singing lead, one song with Brian on piano, one song with John Deacon on guitar and (less frequently but still) one or two songs with Roger on guitar and bass in addition to drums.
** Roger had a sort of IAmTheBand moment with "Fight from the Inside", which was entirely recorded by himself on vocals, guitar, bass and drums. Some other of his compositions at that time were almost entirely recorded by him too, with minimal contributions by the other members (generally some guitar noises by Brian)
* DaysOfTheWeekSong: ''Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon'' and ''In Only Seven Days.''
* DeadArtistsAreBetter: It's an unfortunate fact that Queen had their most successful period in America immediately after the death of Freddie Mercury.
* {{Determinator}}: In their commentaries for the music videos from ''The Miracle'' on the ''Greatest Video Hits II'' DVD, Roger Taylor and Brian often comment on how Freddie Mercury put as much energy as he could into making the best possible videos in spite of how fragile his health had become by 1989.
** The story of how vocals to "The Show Must Go On" were recorded is similarly famous:
--> "When Brian May presented the final demo to Mercury, he had doubts that Mercury would be physically capable of singing the song's highly demanding vocal line, due to the extent of his illness at the time. To May's surprise, when the time came to record the vocals, Mercury consumed a measure of vodka and said "I'll fucking do it, darling!" then proceeded to nail the vocal line in one take without problems."
* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The first album sounded more like LedZeppelin than the sound the band became well known for, while the second took their progressive tendencies UpToEleven. They're good albums, but they're pretty different from what the stuff the band was doing after ''Sheer Heart Attack''.
* EightiesHair: John Deacon's afro (seen in the "Radio Ga Ga" video) has to count.
* EpicRiff: Lots, from ''Keep Yourself Alive'' to ''White Man'' to ''Another One Bites The Dust'', an epic bass riff.
* EpicRocking: Particularly prevalent on their first two albums.
* EverythingIsAnInstrument : "Bicycle Race".
* EverythingsBuiltWithLEGO: Lego versions of Queen in Lego RockBand. [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome It is the awesomest thing in the history of awesome]].
** Additionally, several videos are around on the internet of Queen songs with LEGO stop motion animation.
* FadingIntoTheNextSong: Used on several albums. For example, the piano at the end of "The Prophet's Song" fades into the introduction for "Love Of My Life" on ''A Night At The Opera''.
* FirstGirlWins: When the band began, Freddie was dating a beautiful blonde English woman named Mary Austin. They even moved in together for a while and broke up in 1976. After that, Freddie dated many men and women, eventually being domestic partners with an Irish man (who died on 1st January 2010, but not from AIDS). When Freddie died, Mary got half of his fortune (the other half was split between his sister and his parents), including his mansion, his piano, and publishing royalties (which keep growing with every passing day).
* GadgeteerGenius: Brian May holds a [=Ph.D=] in Astrophysics - a real one that he actually studied and wrote a thesis for, not an honorary one as so many celebrates have. He also designed and built his guitar, the Red Special, himself. [[MemeticMutation In a cave! With a box of scraps!]]
** There's a lot of truth to the box of scraps bit. The guitar's neck is mostly a piece of wood salvaged from an old fireplace surround, and the tremolo bar is a motorcycle handbrake combined with a knitting needle.
** John Deacon too, tinkering with electronics in his youth and later graduated with a First in electrical engineering. He joined in part because the others were impressed by his skill with equipment.
* GagBoobs: Freddie, infamously in "I Want to Break Free".
* GenreRoulette: A typical Queen album from TheSeventies might contain elements of heavy metal, hard rock, progressive rock, music-hall numbers, Dixieland jazz, folk, blues-rock, Beatlesque pop-rock, glam-rock and ballads. Later albums would include funk, dance music, synth-pop, punk-rock, rockabilly, reggae and/or new wave influences. Freddie suggested that this was why it took so long (close to fifteen years after Queen began) for Roger and himself to put out the first Queen solo albums; the band was four solo projects that came together to create the Queen sound.
* GrandFinale: There's no denying that "The Show Must Go On" is this.
* GratuitousForeignLanguage: Is there ''really'' any reason for those "Bismillah!"s in Bohemian Rhapsody? And, for that matter, just why is Scaramouche supposed to do the fandango?
** RuleOfCool, naturally.
** [[http://queenwords.com/lyrics/songs/sng07_01.shtml Mustapha]], along with AsLongAsItSoundsForeign.
** Come on, [[http://queenwords.com/lyrics/songs/sng05_10.shtml "Teo Torriatte"]], [[http://queenwords.com/lyrics/songs/sng23_08.shtml "Las Palabras de Amor"]], [[http://queenwords.com/lyrics/songs/sng04_07.shtml "Seaside Rendezvous"]]
** Rather lampshaded in "Let Me Entertain You":
---> Just take a look at the menu
---> We'll give you rock à la carte
---> We'll breakfast at Tiffany's, ''we'll sing to you in Japanese''
---> We're only here to entertain you
* GreatestHitsAlbum: The two main ones - ''Greatest Hits'' and ''Greatest Hits II'' - were released in 1981 and 1991 respectively and collected the hit singles of the preceding decade. A third album, ''Greatest Hits III'', is probably more aptly described as "Greatest Leftovers", consisting mainly of live Queen+ recordings and some remixes.
* HardGay: Freddie. (Or Hard Bi, maybe)
* HeavyMeta: Roger Taylor wrote a few songs about rock music. His first composition for the group, "Modern Times Rock And Roll" was the first and "Radio Ga Ga" was the best known.
* HeavyMithril: Queen's first two albums [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EYUqsfl7gE are loaded]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1j-6vRykFs with this.]]
* HoYay: Freddie Mercury and Roger Taylor: best friends, metrosexuals, exceptionally good with high falsetto vocals, party animals, heavy smokers (at least at some point) and drinkers.
* IAmNotSpock: When Freddie died, Brian tried to make it as a solo artist (i.e. lead singer) and to make a reputation away from Queen. He even summoned a dream-team backing band that included Cozy Powell, Black Sabbath's Neil Murray and (at one point) Rick Wakeman. It didn't work ... fans liked it more when he walked away from the microphone and played guitar solos.
** Roger formed a parallel band in the 80's, where he was the lead singer and rhythm guitarist rather than the drummer. He was extremely annoyed by fans and journalists still thinking of him as the drummer. His solo career also suffered a bit from it.
*** Roger sometimes showed annoyance about being considered only as "the drummer", even with the band Queen. There are some interviews where he introduces himself as "the drummer and one of the vocalists" of the band.
* ICallItVera: Brian May's guitar, "Red Special", which he built from scraps as a teenager.
** Also of note was the amp often used with the Red Special, the "Deacy Amp", built by Electrical Engineer-turned Bassist, John Deacon.
* IconicItem: Freddie's bottomless microphone stand; during a gig very early in the band's career his mic stand snapped in half in the middle of a song, but he carried on with the intact bit and decided it would be more interesting to keep it like that.
* ImportantHaircut: Freddie, Roger and John all had long hair in the 1970s, but then appeared with short hair around the time of ''News of the World'', which represented new directions in the group's style. Freddie's famous mustache, which he grew around the time of ''The Game'' and the Flash Gordon soundtrack, also accompanied changes to Queen's sound. Only Brian May has kept the same haircut (huge, dark and curly) for the past 40 years (one of his conditions for Queen's inclusion in Lego Rock Band was that they portray his hair accurately).
* IntercourseWithYou: Hey, guess what "Get Down, Make Love" [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin is about]].
** Funny, the chorus seems to make it about the lead singer bitching out his girlfriend for being [[AllWomenArePrudes a prude]]...
* InTheStyleOf: "Somebody to Love" is [[InTheStyleOf In the Style of]] ArethaFranklin, who Freddie Mercury was a fan of.
* IronicEcho: "Good Company", with the line "take care of those you call your own and keep good company".
** "Sleeping On The Sidewalk" also has this: "I may get hungry but I sure don't wanna go home/I don't get hungry and I sure don't wanna go home/I may get hungry and I sure do wanna go home"
* IThoughtItMeant: No, "Mother Love" is not about ParentalIncest.
** Neither is "Father to Son."
** Here's a big one. The "no synthesizers" disclaimers that appeared on Queen's albums [[CaptainObvious (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,]] [[BerserkButton 'I like that synth!'"]]
* ItsAllAboutMe: ''Bohemian Rhapsody''.
** [[OrIsIt Or Is It?]]
* TheJimmyHartVersion: "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.
* KindheartedCatLover: Freddie adored cats, and even wrote two good-bye songs for his own felines before he died.
** "All Dead, All Dead" was written because one of Brian May's cats died.
** "Delilah" is aptly titled after Freddie's favorite cat.
* LargeHam: Freddie, as well. Brian also qualifies in some videos, especially the aforementioned "It's a Hard Life" in which he (according to Roger) "Gets dangerously close to acting."
* LongRunnerLineUp, taken to its LogicalExtreme: a LongRunner band (20 years) with only ''one'' lineup: Freddie Mercury, Brian May, John Deacon, and Roger Taylor.
** Except for the recent Queen + Paul Something or Another thing.
* LyricalDissonance: "I Want to Break Free" is ''not'' a happy song, but has a catchy, upbeat tone.
** Unless it actually is a happy song and you're looking at it from the wrong angle. (Queen songs are not always about anything specific.)
** There's also "Don't Try Suicide," which is about [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin pretty much what you'd expect]], but sounds like a reject from ''WestSideStory''.
** Hell, Queen have this all over the place. "Bring Back That Leroy Brown", "Misfire", "'39", "Somebody to Love"...
** "One Vision" sounds like an upbeat, inspirational song, until you realize the lyrics are about [[PuttingOnTheReich fascism]]...
*** Critics at the time had always equated Queen with fascism, due to the hold Freddie had over the audience coming as one, and due to the critics' dismissal of the kind of arena rock Queen did so well. WordOfGod mentions that One Vision (wel, apart from the "[[RuleOfFunny fried chicken]]" line) is about MartinLutherKingJr.
* MetalScream: "In the Lap of the Gods" has a lot of them. Roger Taylor used to perform them live at every concert just to prove they weren't synthesized.
* MindScrew: Applies to a lot of their early and later work. Don't even pretend Bohemian Rhapsody makes sense.
** It sounds like the story of a murder trial. Seriously, it's not that hard.
*** A Guitar World special edition magazine interviewed Freddie's assistant, Peter Freestone, who suggested it might be about Freddie coming to terms with his newfound sexuality, and fearing breaking the news to his then-girlfriend, Mary Austin.
** "39" ''does'' make sense, but seems not to. It helps to know the back story.
*** Seriously. Best song about theoretical Einsteinian space travel-induced time dilation masquerading as a sea shanty [[http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A733619 EVER.]]
* MohsScaleOfRockAndMetalHardness: All the way from 1 to 7.
* TheMusical: ''WeWillRockYou'', surprisingly good for being a jukebox musical but then it helps to have Queen music period.
* NamesTheSame: Roger Taylor sometimes goes by Roger Meddows-Taylor to distinguish himself from the Roger Taylor who played drums in DuranDuran.
** There is a separate Brian May, an Australian who composes [[MadMax film scores]].
* NonIndicativeName: ''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.
* ThePeteBest: Original bassist Tim Staffell.
* PopStarComposer: Queen wrote songs for ''The Highlander'', ''Flash Gordon the Movie'', and 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' ''StarWars'' soundtrack.
** Brian also did the soundtrack for the RiseOfTheRobots fighting game. It was far more epic than the game was.
* ThePowerOfFriendship: Celebrated in "Friends Will Be Friends".
* PornStache: Freddie, during the 80s.
* PosthumousCollaboration: Deliberate on Freddie's part for ''Made in Heaven''. Freddie recorded as many vocals as he could for the band to work with, but they still had to dig deeper than that to make a full album. For example, Brian sings the last verse of "Mother Love" because Freddie didn't finish his vocal.
** And a lot of Freddie's vocal and piano work ''Made in Heaven'' comes from long before 1991. All in all, only three songs are actually written and completely recorded after ''Innuendo''.
* ProtestSong: "I Want It All" was interpreted both as an anti-apartheid song and as an [=LBGT=] anthem, though neither of those meanings were intended by the band.
** The anti-apartheid interpretation is rather ironic in that Queen was one of the few major groups [[http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2005/jan/14/2http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2005/jan/14/2 not to abide]] with the UN cultural boycott on apartheid South Africa, and they ended up fined and blacklisted. Queen members later argued that they weren't a political group and that the crowd was integrated, MissingThePoint on the policy of deinvestment.
** "I Want To Break Free" was also adopted as an LGBT anthem.
* TheQuietOne: John Deacon, almost literally; he was the only member who didn't sing, and said very little in group interviews, generally only speaking when a question was directed specifically to him. Since the band went their separate ways in 1991, John mostly retired from the music industry, only going back into the studio to record the "No-One But You (Only the Good Die Young)" single. He later gave his support to Queen+Paul Rodgers, but declined to take part.
* ReclusiveArtist: 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.
* RefugeInAudacity: "Fat Bottomed Girls". And the promotional stunts of the era, [[MsFanservice with 50 naked women riding bicycles]]. And to top it off, the outrageous (and outrageously expensive), [[SexDrugsAndRockAndRoll cocaine-fueled]] promotional party they 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 TheSexPistols were recording in an opposite studio to Queen in 1977, SidVicious 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."
* SanitySlippageSong: "I'm Going Slightly Mad".
** Also, the traditional song "Oh I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside" which plays at the end of "Seven Seas of Rhye". At least, this is how the musical ''We Will Rock You'' interpreted it.
* SelfBackingVocalist: 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.
* SelfDeprecation: 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"
* '70sHair: Brian May has kept his for more than forty years.
* ShirtlessScene: Freddie had a few in concerts.
* ShoutOut:
** To the MarxBrothers, the albums ''A Night at the Opera'' and ''A Day at the Races'' taking their names from two of their films.
** The music video for "Calling All Girls" was based upon the GeorgeLucas movie ''Film/{{THX 1138}}''.
** The music video for "Radio Ga Ga" was based upon the FritzLang move ''Metropolis'' - which Freddie supplied a song for in a modern overdub.
** "Bring Back That Leroy Brown" (from ''Sheer Heart Attack'') is an homage to Jim Croce, who had died the previous year.
** The "I Want To Break Free" video is a parody of ''CoronationStreet''.
** The lyrics of "Innuendo" (which were started by Freddie, but were mostly Roger's work) are intended as a shout out to "[[LedZeppelin Kashmir]]".
* SixthRanger: 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.
* SopranoAndGravel: 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 [[PinkFloyd 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).
* SpiritualSuccessor: 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 [[YourMileageMayVary 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}}.''
** More notably, the entirety of ''A Day At The Races'' can be thought of as a "sequel" to ''A Night At The Opera''. They're both named after MarxBrothers films, the album art is almost exactly the same with a black background rather than white, and many of the songs parallel each other. "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Somebody to Love", "'39" and "Long Away", "The Prophet's Song" and "White Man", "You're My Best Friend" and "You and I", and very specifically, both albums open with EpicRiff-driven HardRock tunes ("Death on Two Legs (Dedicated to..." and "Tie Your Mother Down").
* StuffyOldSongsAboutTheButtocks: "Fat-Bottomed Girls".
* SubduedSection: Used in too many of their songs to list.
* {{Synthesizeritis}}: They've done some good tracks with synths after they started using them, but there's just no excuse for ''Hot Space'' (other than "Under Pressure") and ''The Miracle''.
* TakeThat: "Scandal" is a take that against the celebrity-obsessed media, who were giving both Freddie and Brian 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 [[PrecisionFStrike motherfucker]] of a gentleman". "Flick of the Wrist", from the preceding album is written along the same lines, and reputedly directed at the same [[PrecisionFStrike motherfucker]].
*** It's a full-blown [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech Reason You Suck Song]]
** "Fight From The Inside" and "Sheer Heart Attack" (both written by Roger) are [[TakeThat TakeThats]] at the then-emerging punk scene.
* TalksLikeASimile: "Don't Stop Me Now."
* ThreeChordsAndTheTruth: Usually averted, as lots of Queen songs have quite a few more than three chords, and Brian May is highly respected for his virtuosity as a guitarist. However, Freddie Mercury joked about it at the 1986 Wembley concert - "''This shitty guitar never plays the chords I want it to play. It only knows three. Let's see what happens.''" - before launching into "'Crazy Little Thing Called Love"
* UnreliableNarrator: [[CaptainObvious "Liar"]]... [[EveryoneIsJesusInPurgatory Maybe]]...
* UrExample: "Stone Cold Crazy" was one of the earliest HardRock songs not to be interchangeable with BluesRock, and it was a precursor to and big influence on several styles of Metal (Speed Metal and Thrash Metal especially). As mentioned above "Dead On Time" falls in here too.
** {{Metallica}} covered "Stone Cold Crazy", releasing it first as a B-side and then on their all-covers album ''Garage Inc.'' They also played it at the Tribute Concert, cementing its status as Metallica's homage/thank you to the band.
* VillainProtagonist: "Bohemian Rhapsody".
* VillainSong: "Gimme the Prize [[{{Highlander}} (Kurgan's Theme)]]"
* [[WasItReallyWorthIt Was It Really]] / WorthIt : 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!'
* WastedSong: 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.
* WeaponOfChoice: The Red Special for Brian. So much so that when he played on Paul Rodgers' set at the "Strat Pack" concert, which was a tribute to the 50th anniversary of the Fender Stratocaster, Brian brought the Red Special along, theme of the concert be damned.
* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome: Queen and only Queen could write a song about something mundane as riding a bike and make it fucking AWESOME.
** "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".
* WordSaladLyrics: 90% of their songs don't really mean anything, they just sound cool.
** Although that's debatable: some sources say Freddie encouraged their (and especially his) "throwaway lyricist" image to avoid being asked to analyze the words in interviews, but many (or at least several) of them were actually very personal.
* YouAreTheNewTrend: Freddie's look throughout the 80's became the stereotypical look for gays, especially the slicked/coiffed hair, moustache, and hairy chest.
----
to:
[[caption-width-right:350:''I see a little silhouetto of a man...'']]
->''"We are a very competitive group. We are four good writers and there are no passengers."''
-->-- '''Freddie Mercury''' as quoted in the ''Freddie Mercury Solo Collection''
Famous British rock band fronted by Freddie Mercury (vocals, piano and other keyboards), with Brian May (guitar, vocals and keyboards), Roger Taylor (drums, vocals, also guitar and bass on studio recordings) and John Deacon (bass, keyboards and guitar on some studio recordings), known for their style which combines hard rock, massed vocal harmonies (from Mercury, May and Taylor; Deacon only supplied backing vocals live), Brian May's complex, intricately arranged and highly overdubbed guitar work, catchy pop melodies, surreal humour and flamboyant, theatrical performances (which the band was steered towards chiefly by Mercury).
All members of the band were songwriters, approaching [[NeoclassicalPunkZydecoRockabilly wildly different styles]], from straight-up HardRock, GlamRock, ProgressiveRock, HeavyMetal, disco[=/=]{{Funk}}, pop, rockabilly, NewWave and SynthPop, going all the way between 1 and 7 on the MohsScaleOfRockAndMetalHardness. While all bandmembers shared an eclectic approach to songwriting and a tendency for experiments, generally speaking:
* Mercury was responsible for many of their ballads ("Love of My Life", "My Melancholy Blues"), pop songs and stylistic experiments ("Killer Queen", "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Somebody to Love" etc.).
* If you're headbanging to an incredibly guitar-heavy HardRock tune it's probably been written by May ("Prophet's Song", "Tie Your Mother Down", "We Will Rock You")
* If the song is more old school rock-ish and its lyrics deal with things like rebellion, passion, living a life outside the rules etc., it was probably penned by Taylor ("Tenement Funster", "I'm in Love with My Car", "Sheer Heart Attack", "Fight from the Inside").
* The other band members have observed that Deacon was less influenced by bands like LedZeppelin or TheWho than the rest of them and had preferred {{Music/Soul}} and American {{Funk}} music in his youth. As a result a lot of his songs have a kind of Motown pop style ("You're My Best Friend", "Misfire") or a funky, bass-driven sound ("Another One Bites the Dust"). He also wrote several ballads, including "Spread Your Wings", "You and I" and "Friends Will Be Friends" (the last one in collaboration with Freddie, with whom he also co-wrote "The Miracle").
* Songs that combine several of these elements were often writing collaborations.
The band was formed in 1970, and technically ceased to exist after Mercury died of AIDS in 1991. Unwilling to continue without a key member, the band stopped all activity besides a posthumous album with Mercury's previously recorded vocals and one single in 1997. Deacon officially retired from the band soon afterwards. May and Taylor have continued to record and tour in collaboration with other musicians under the "Queen + ..." moniker, which resulted in one album with Paul Rodgers as singer. The album was greeted with critical disdain and a fan backlash over the perceived nature of Rodgers as a ReplacementScrappy, despite May and Taylor repeatedly pointing out that he was only a featured artist and not a replacement for Mercury. Rodgers parted with the band in 2009.
They have many well-known songs. Here's a few of them:
* "[[http://www.mtvmusic.com/queen/videos/18187/bohemian_rhapsody.jhtml Bohemian Rhapsody]]" Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality...
** BohemianParody is a trope that covers all the countless covers and parodies of this music piece.
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN_HVup9oOg You're My Best Friend]]", probably best known recently for appearing at the end of ''ShaunOfTheDead''.
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgzGwKwLmgM Don't Stop Me Now]]", like the song above, is best known for being an important element of the pub scene in ''ShaunOfTheDead''. Tonight, I'm going to have myself a real good time. I feel aliiiiii-iiiiiii-iiiiiii-iiiiiiiive. Voted the greatest driving song ever by the viewers of ''TopGear''.
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tJYN-eG1zk We Will Rock You]]" (Weeeee will, weeee will rock you! <STOMP STOMP CLAP> <STOMP STOMP CLAP>)and "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sogKUx_q7ig We Are The Champions]]"(WEEEEEEEE ARE THE CHAMPIONS, MY FRIENDS.) (Dual A-side, commonly played one after another on the radio)
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS4_Z84-rRE Flash]]" (ThemeTune to the 1980 ''FlashGordon'' movie) with samples of [[BrianBlessed BRIAN BLESSED]]. FLASH! AAAAAAHHHHHHHH-AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH! SAVIOR OF THE UNIVERSE!
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Jtpf8N5IDE Who Wants To Live Forever]]", used, among others, for ''{{Highlander}}''. Not to mention [[WhoWantsToLiveForever it is]] a TropeNamer.
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnrXiaPVeHY Princes Of The Universe]]", the main theme for ''{{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]]"
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEI4U5KyAS0 Radio Ga Ga]]", which gave its name to [[LadyGaga a certain pop singer]] in 2009.
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY0WxgSXdEE Another One Bites The Dust]]": Their best-selling single.
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO6D_BAuYCI Crazy Little Thing Called Love]]"
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtrEN-YKLBM Under Pressure]]", the vastly famous collaboration between Queen and DavidBowie.
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEbEMjKitA4 Fat Bottomed Girls]]", an unofficial anthem for {{BBW}}s the world over.
* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zqct2SGoDE0 The Show Must Go On]]", used spectacularly by [[{{DCComics}} Flash Rogue Pied Piper]] in CountdownToFinalCrisis to stop [=OMAC=]/Brother Eye and virtually NUKE the planet Apokolips.
* ''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiot1P3-Hng I Was Born To Love You]]''
* ''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eM8Ss28zjcE&feature=related I Want To Break Free]]'', which was a huge hit in Britain but barely heard in America thanks to the video being [[BannedInChina banned]]. (Whether it was the ballerinas in skintight leotards performing an erotic modern dance, or [[WholesomeCrossdresser all four members of the band appearing in drag]], remains a mystery for the ages.)
Discography:
* 1973 - ''[[SelfTitledAlbum Queen]]''
* 1974 - ''Queen II''
* 1974 - ''Sheer Heart Attack''
* 1975 - ''A Night at the Opera''
* 1976 - ''A Day at the Races''
* 1977 - ''News of the World''
* 1978 - ''Jazz''
* 1980 - ''FlashGordon'' (official soundtrack to the film)
* 1980 - ''The Game''
* 1982 - ''Hot Space''
* 1984 - ''The Works''
* 1986 - ''A Kind of Magic'' (an unofficial ''{{Highlander}}'' soundtrack, with 6 out of 9 songs from the movie and three new songs)
* 1989 - ''The Miracle''
* 1991 - ''Innuendo'' (last album recorded by the band)
* 1995 - ''Made in Heaven'' (posthumous album with Freddie's vocals and piano, last album released by the band)
* 2008 - ''The Cosmos Rocks'' (credited to Queen + Paul Rodgers)
----
!!This band contains examples of:
* AllDrummersAreAnimals: Roger Taylor probably cultivated the hardest rocking image in the group.
* AllStarCast: 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, [[WhatCouldHaveBeen 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.
* AmbiguouslyBrown: Freddie. His real name was Farrokh Bulsara, and he was born in Zanzibar, East Africa to Parsi parents, and went to boarding school in Bombay, India. According to TheOtherWiki, he was named one of the 60 most influential Asian heroes of the last 60 years.
* AmbiguouslyGay: Also Freddie. He rarely to never came out and admitted his sexuality, but he was able to get much [[GettingCrapPastTheRadar past the radar]] (the {{Leatherman}} look of the late seventies, and the HardGay "clone" look of TheEighties comes to mind) until his death. Queen's image combined the fey and the macho even after the "glitter rock" phase of TheSeventies.
** He was probably bisexual, with the exception of the "daffodil" quote, he identified himself as bi, and had both male and female partners (although seemed to be more into men than women.)
* {{American Accents}}: Freddie claims to have one during the 1986 Wembley concert, and asks the audience if they like it. [[EstrogenBrigadeBait It's]] [[EvenTheGuysWantHim pretty]] [[StupidSexyFlanders good]].
* TheApartheidEra: The band got a lot of heat for playing the Sun City resort in South Africa during apartheid.
* AStormIsComing: "The Prophet's Song", based on the Biblical story of Noah.
* AudienceParticipationSong: "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" [[WhatCouldHaveBeen 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!
* AuthorExistenceFailure: Freddie died a tragic death from AIDS. He kept it a closely guarded secret and only went public with it less than 24 hours before his death. It has to be said though that there were quite a few hints in their songs and in the fact that Freddie hadn't appeared in any music video since These Are the Days of Our Lives.
* BadassBoast: "Princes of The Universe", "Gimme the Prize", "We Are the Champions" (no time for losers) and "Seven Seas of Rhye".
** The lyrics also contain bits of AGodAmI. Given that the first two are from ''{{Highlander}}'' this should not be surprising.
*** Khashoggi's Ship, for the six of us who've heard it. Just partying with a famous arms dealer, gun-wielding giants be damned . . .
* BadassMustache: Freddie Mercury.
* BerserkButton: Brian and Roger's commentary for ''Queen Rock Montreal'' reveals that, at this point, Freddie was emphatically ''not'' pleased about making a concert film, didn't really get on with the director and thought the cameramen were getting in the way. Since the plan was to take footage from both nights' shows, he [[BoredOnBoard tried to make a mess of that by wearing trousers on one night and shorts on the second]].
** Freddie got really annoyed at one concert when fans showed up with banners that read [[DeaderThanDisco DISCO SUCKS]] after the release of Hot Space. "It's only a bloody record for Christ's sake, people get so excited"
* BeyondTheImpossible: During the video for Princes of the Universe, Connor [=MacLeod=] from {{Highlander}} challenges Freddie Mercury to a swordfight. The duel ends in a DRAW. Think about that for a second...
** Add in that Freddie is fighting with the microphone stand.
** For some, Roger Taylor and his high notes are BeyondTheImpossible. Exhibit A: Opening notes of "Somebody to Love." Exhibit B: "For MEEEEE!" from ''Bohemian Rhapsody''... And he could get even higher than that: ''Seaside Rendezvous'' has a high C, and his collaboration with British band Fox features him singing (without studio trickery) a tritone HIGHER than 'for me'. Conveniently, the word he's singing during that note is indeed 'higher'."I'm In Love With My Car" features him singing a high E in full voice; it was one of the few he sang on his own in live performances and without any apparent effort.
*** Roger's vocals in live performances in general. How many drummers do know you that can sing and play drums AT THE SAME TIME?
** And if you think that's ridiculous, "It's Late" puts both to shame.
** [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vK8pxoxgNI In the Lap of the Gods.]] The shrieks are Taylor's, and he could pull them off live.
** "Brighton Rock" features Freddie singing mostly in falsetto.
** That one note Freddie hits in the middle of "Under Pressure". Wow!
** Their performance at Wembley Stadium during Live Aid 1985. Freddie somehow got ''75,000 people'' to clap in unison during the refrain of "Radio Ga-Ga". (It must be seen to be believed, so go see it.)
*** (What I always thought was amazing about that performance was the visual representation of the actual speed of sound. Everyone in the crowd "clap-claps" on beat, but since the crowd itself was so *HUGE*, you could actually see a "wave" passing over the crowd as each row clapped a millisecond later than the one before as the sound reached THEIR ears. It's shiver-worthy once you realize that's what's happening.)
** Brian May has stated that Freddie composed "Ogre Battle" on an acoustic guitar, and counts that as a personal BeyondTheImpossible moment.
** On ''A Night At The Opera'', the "brass" and "woodwinds" on "Seaside Rendezvous" are, respectively, Roger and Freddie's ''vocals'', sped up or slowed down on tape. And the temperance jazz band on "Good Company" come entirely from Brian May's ''guitar''. No synthesizers, no samplers, no guitar synthesizers. 16-track analog tape.
** The overdubs on "Bohemian Rhapsody" were so multilayered (again, on ''sixteen-track analog tape'') that you could see through sections of the tape.
* BigBeautifulWoman: "Fat-Bottomed Girls"
* {{Bishonen}}: All of them when younger.
** Subverted in that, even then, Freddie had PermaStubble.
* BlackSheepHit: To some extent, "Another One Bites the Dust", a funk song that was pretty much written because it was the particular style John happened to enjoy. In Britain it was a hit during a period when everything they released shot up the charts, so it generally passed without any particular comment. In America, it's their most successful song and ended up dictating the sound their next album would follow.
* BoringButPractical: Brian May's method for supplying the harp parts on ''A Night At The Opera''. Since he couldn't actually play the instrument, he recorded each note separately and edited them together to get the chords he wanted.
* {{Camp}}: The video for the operatic ''It's A Hard Life'' takes it UpToEleven. 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 FootFocus shot between Freddie and his girlfriend at the time, all surrounded by a crowd of elaborately-costumed, [[LargeHam ultra-hammy]] extras dressed like opera characters in period costumes. John Deacon also has a Unicorn head on a stick for some reason.
* CareerResurrection: They hadn't exactly fallen into obscurity by that point, but people were starting to regard Queen as old hat and past their prime... until [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDckgX3oU_w&feature=related Live Aid]], that is.
* CargoShip: "I'm in Love with my Car", on ''A Night at the Opera'' is a [[{{In-Universe}} canon]] example:
--> ''When my hand's on your [[IsThatWhatTheyreCallingItNow grease gun]]''
--> ''[[HoYay Oh, it's like a]] [[HarsherInHindsight disease]], son''
* CarpetOfVirility: Freddie had quite a bit of manly chest hair.
* CharacterDevelopment: ''It's A Hard Life''. It starts off with the singer dramatically announcing there's no reason to go on in life after a break-up, then within his mourning, he realizes how much effort lasting relationships take throughout the song. At the last chorus, the lyrics have changed to a more optimistic outlook, as he moves on without regret, instead reflecting back on the break-up as a lesson learned in life.
* ChristmasRushed: A failed example. ''Innuendo'' was supposed to be avaliable for Christmas 1990, but was delayed because of Freddie Mercury's health. It was eventually released in February of 1991, nine months before Mercury's death.
* ClothesMakeTheLegend: Freddie's white slacks and yellow jacket.
** The [[CarpetOfVirility chest-exposing]] checkerboard leotards from 1976-1978 are also iconic.
* ContinuityNod: ''Love of My Life'' has "when I get older I will be there at your side to remind you how I still love you, I still love you". Sixteen years later, ''These Are the Days of Our Lives'' (by a different songwriter though) has an older (and dying) Freddie singing "when I look and I find, I still love you... I still love you." The video makes it all even more tearful, as it was Freddie's last.
** "Seaside Rendezvous" from ''A Night At The Opera'' has "I love you madly", while "Was It All Worth It" from ''The Miracle'' has "We love you madly".
** "Fat Bottomed Girls" and "Bicycle Race" (both released on one single) reference each other; "Bicycle Race" features ''"Fat Bottomed Girls will be riding today,"'' and "Fat Bottomed Girls" has ''"Get on your bikes and ride!"''
** The opening track from ''Jazz'' ("Let Me Entertain You") includes the lyric, "We'll Breakfast at Tiffany's / We'll sing to you in Japanese" as a reference to the song "Teo Toriatte" from the "A Day at the Races" album (which had a chorus sung in phonetic Japanese).
** The symmetrical group image featured in the cover of ''Queen II'' (and on the profile pic) was frequently used in videos, including "Bohemian Rhapsody" and an updated one in "One Vision".
* CoverVersion: They never actually recorded any cover songs on their albums, but they performed plenty of cover songs during live shows. Examples include "[[ElvisPresley Jailhouse Rock]]" on ''Queen Rock Montreal'' and a medley of "[[RickyNelson Hello Mary Lou]]", "[[Music/LeiberAndStoller You're So Square]]", "[[LittleRichard Tutti Frutti]]" and "[[TheSpencerDavisGroup Gimme Some Lovin']]" on ''Live At Wembley''.
* CreatorBacklash: The aforementioned "It's a Hard Life" video? May isn't a big fan of it and Taylor outright hates it, calling it "the worst music video ever" on the ''Greatest Hits 2'' commentary. They've both admitted loving the song, though.
** Taylor also admitted in a recent documentary that it was the most fun he had on a video shoot. He just doesn't like the finished product.
** Both Deacon and Taylor publicly panned ''Jazz'' and ''Hot Space''. The latter was defended by May (who claims that without it there'd have been no ''Thriller'' - MichaelJackson agreed that their album was an influence on him) and Mercury (whose debut solo album is basically a ''Hot Space'' II).
** Brian May hates Don't Stop Me Now.
*** In a recent documentary about Queen Brian said he actually kind of liked Don't Stop Me Now
** Freddie was not pleased with the sound of the Wurlitzer electric piano, which John insisted on playing on "You're My Best Friend". Freddie preferred the sound of the acoustic piano. He still loved the song itself, though
** It took lots of fighting and arguing before finally deciding to add a guitar solo to the song "Back Chat", mostly because John Deacon, the composer, wanted to eliminate every possible rock element from this song.
* CreatorBreakdown: Most of ''Innuendo'' is about Freddie coming to terms with his illness and eventual death, particularly "These Are the Days of Our Lives" and "I'm Going Slightly Mad".
* ADayInTheLimelight: 1977-1982 concerts featured drummer Roger Taylor singing lead on one song (usually "I'm In Love With My Car") (on which Freddie stuck to piano and backing vocals). Most of their albums usually had one song with Brian singing lead, one song with Roger singing lead, one song with Brian on piano, one song with John Deacon on guitar and (less frequently but still) one or two songs with Roger on guitar and bass in addition to drums.
** Roger had a sort of IAmTheBand moment with "Fight from the Inside", which was entirely recorded by himself on vocals, guitar, bass and drums. Some other of his compositions at that time were almost entirely recorded by him too, with minimal contributions by the other members (generally some guitar noises by Brian)
* DaysOfTheWeekSong: ''Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon'' and ''In Only Seven Days.''
* DeadArtistsAreBetter: It's an unfortunate fact that Queen had their most successful period in America immediately after the death of Freddie Mercury.
* {{Determinator}}: In their commentaries for the music videos from ''The Miracle'' on the ''Greatest Video Hits II'' DVD, Roger Taylor and Brian often comment on how Freddie Mercury put as much energy as he could into making the best possible videos in spite of how fragile his health had become by 1989.
** The story of how vocals to "The Show Must Go On" were recorded is similarly famous:
--> "When Brian May presented the final demo to Mercury, he had doubts that Mercury would be physically capable of singing the song's highly demanding vocal line, due to the extent of his illness at the time. To May's surprise, when the time came to record the vocals, Mercury consumed a measure of vodka and said "I'll fucking do it, darling!" then proceeded to nail the vocal line in one take without problems."
* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The first album sounded more like LedZeppelin than the sound the band became well known for, while the second took their progressive tendencies UpToEleven. They're good albums, but they're pretty different from what the stuff the band was doing after ''Sheer Heart Attack''.
* EightiesHair: John Deacon's afro (seen in the "Radio Ga Ga" video) has to count.
* EpicRiff: Lots, from ''Keep Yourself Alive'' to ''White Man'' to ''Another One Bites The Dust'', an epic bass riff.
* EpicRocking: Particularly prevalent on their first two albums.
* EverythingIsAnInstrument : "Bicycle Race".
* EverythingsBuiltWithLEGO: Lego versions of Queen in Lego RockBand. [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome It is the awesomest thing in the history of awesome]].
** Additionally, several videos are around on the internet of Queen songs with LEGO stop motion animation.
* FadingIntoTheNextSong: Used on several albums. For example, the piano at the end of "The Prophet's Song" fades into the introduction for "Love Of My Life" on ''A Night At The Opera''.
* FirstGirlWins: When the band began, Freddie was dating a beautiful blonde English woman named Mary Austin. They even moved in together for a while and broke up in 1976. After that, Freddie dated many men and women, eventually being domestic partners with an Irish man (who died on 1st January 2010, but not from AIDS). When Freddie died, Mary got half of his fortune (the other half was split between his sister and his parents), including his mansion, his piano, and publishing royalties (which keep growing with every passing day).
* GadgeteerGenius: Brian May holds a [=Ph.D=] in Astrophysics - a real one that he actually studied and wrote a thesis for, not an honorary one as so many celebrates have. He also designed and built his guitar, the Red Special, himself. [[MemeticMutation In a cave! With a box of scraps!]]
** There's a lot of truth to the box of scraps bit. The guitar's neck is mostly a piece of wood salvaged from an old fireplace surround, and the tremolo bar is a motorcycle handbrake combined with a knitting needle.
** John Deacon too, tinkering with electronics in his youth and later graduated with a First in electrical engineering. He joined in part because the others were impressed by his skill with equipment.
* GagBoobs: Freddie, infamously in "I Want to Break Free".
* GenreRoulette: A typical Queen album from TheSeventies might contain elements of heavy metal, hard rock, progressive rock, music-hall numbers, Dixieland jazz, folk, blues-rock, Beatlesque pop-rock, glam-rock and ballads. Later albums would include funk, dance music, synth-pop, punk-rock, rockabilly, reggae and/or new wave influences. Freddie suggested that this was why it took so long (close to fifteen years after Queen began) for Roger and himself to put out the first Queen solo albums; the band was four solo projects that came together to create the Queen sound.
* GrandFinale: There's no denying that "The Show Must Go On" is this.
* GratuitousForeignLanguage: Is there ''really'' any reason for those "Bismillah!"s in Bohemian Rhapsody? And, for that matter, just why is Scaramouche supposed to do the fandango?
** RuleOfCool, naturally.
** [[http://queenwords.com/lyrics/songs/sng07_01.shtml Mustapha]], along with AsLongAsItSoundsForeign.
** Come on, [[http://queenwords.com/lyrics/songs/sng05_10.shtml "Teo Torriatte"]], [[http://queenwords.com/lyrics/songs/sng23_08.shtml "Las Palabras de Amor"]], [[http://queenwords.com/lyrics/songs/sng04_07.shtml "Seaside Rendezvous"]]
** Rather lampshaded in "Let Me Entertain You":
---> Just take a look at the menu
---> We'll give you rock à la carte
---> We'll breakfast at Tiffany's, ''we'll sing to you in Japanese''
---> We're only here to entertain you
* GreatestHitsAlbum: The two main ones - ''Greatest Hits'' and ''Greatest Hits II'' - were released in 1981 and 1991 respectively and collected the hit singles of the preceding decade. A third album, ''Greatest Hits III'', is probably more aptly described as "Greatest Leftovers", consisting mainly of live Queen+ recordings and some remixes.
* HardGay: Freddie. (Or Hard Bi, maybe)
* HeavyMeta: Roger Taylor wrote a few songs about rock music. His first composition for the group, "Modern Times Rock And Roll" was the first and "Radio Ga Ga" was the best known.
* HeavyMithril: Queen's first two albums [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EYUqsfl7gE are loaded]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1j-6vRykFs with this.]]
* HoYay: Freddie Mercury and Roger Taylor: best friends, metrosexuals, exceptionally good with high falsetto vocals, party animals, heavy smokers (at least at some point) and drinkers.
* IAmNotSpock: When Freddie died, Brian tried to make it as a solo artist (i.e. lead singer) and to make a reputation away from Queen. He even summoned a dream-team backing band that included Cozy Powell, Black Sabbath's Neil Murray and (at one point) Rick Wakeman. It didn't work ... fans liked it more when he walked away from the microphone and played guitar solos.
** Roger formed a parallel band in the 80's, where he was the lead singer and rhythm guitarist rather than the drummer. He was extremely annoyed by fans and journalists still thinking of him as the drummer. His solo career also suffered a bit from it.
*** Roger sometimes showed annoyance about being considered only as "the drummer", even with the band Queen. There are some interviews where he introduces himself as "the drummer and one of the vocalists" of the band.
* ICallItVera: Brian May's guitar, "Red Special", which he built from scraps as a teenager.
** Also of note was the amp often used with the Red Special, the "Deacy Amp", built by Electrical Engineer-turned Bassist, John Deacon.
* IconicItem: Freddie's bottomless microphone stand; during a gig very early in the band's career his mic stand snapped in half in the middle of a song, but he carried on with the intact bit and decided it would be more interesting to keep it like that.
* ImportantHaircut: Freddie, Roger and John all had long hair in the 1970s, but then appeared with short hair around the time of ''News of the World'', which represented new directions in the group's style. Freddie's famous mustache, which he grew around the time of ''The Game'' and the Flash Gordon soundtrack, also accompanied changes to Queen's sound. Only Brian May has kept the same haircut (huge, dark and curly) for the past 40 years (one of his conditions for Queen's inclusion in Lego Rock Band was that they portray his hair accurately).
* IntercourseWithYou: Hey, guess what "Get Down, Make Love" [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin is about]].
** Funny, the chorus seems to make it about the lead singer bitching out his girlfriend for being [[AllWomenArePrudes a prude]]...
* InTheStyleOf: "Somebody to Love" is [[InTheStyleOf In the Style of]] ArethaFranklin, who Freddie Mercury was a fan of.
* IronicEcho: "Good Company", with the line "take care of those you call your own and keep good company".
** "Sleeping On The Sidewalk" also has this: "I may get hungry but I sure don't wanna go home/I don't get hungry and I sure don't wanna go home/I may get hungry and I sure do wanna go home"
* IThoughtItMeant: No, "Mother Love" is not about ParentalIncest.
** Neither is "Father to Son."
** Here's a big one. The "no synthesizers" disclaimers that appeared on Queen's albums [[CaptainObvious (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,]] [[BerserkButton 'I like that synth!'"]]
* ItsAllAboutMe: ''Bohemian Rhapsody''.
** [[OrIsIt Or Is It?]]
* TheJimmyHartVersion: "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.
* KindheartedCatLover: Freddie adored cats, and even wrote two good-bye songs for his own felines before he died.
** "All Dead, All Dead" was written because one of Brian May's cats died.
** "Delilah" is aptly titled after Freddie's favorite cat.
* LargeHam: Freddie, as well. Brian also qualifies in some videos, especially the aforementioned "It's a Hard Life" in which he (according to Roger) "Gets dangerously close to acting."
* LongRunnerLineUp, taken to its LogicalExtreme: a LongRunner band (20 years) with only ''one'' lineup: Freddie Mercury, Brian May, John Deacon, and Roger Taylor.
** Except for the recent Queen + Paul Something or Another thing.
* LyricalDissonance: "I Want to Break Free" is ''not'' a happy song, but has a catchy, upbeat tone.
** Unless it actually is a happy song and you're looking at it from the wrong angle. (Queen songs are not always about anything specific.)
** There's also "Don't Try Suicide," which is about [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin pretty much what you'd expect]], but sounds like a reject from ''WestSideStory''.
** Hell, Queen have this all over the place. "Bring Back That Leroy Brown", "Misfire", "'39", "Somebody to Love"...
** "One Vision" sounds like an upbeat, inspirational song, until you realize the lyrics are about [[PuttingOnTheReich fascism]]...
*** Critics at the time had always equated Queen with fascism, due to the hold Freddie had over the audience coming as one, and due to the critics' dismissal of the kind of arena rock Queen did so well. WordOfGod mentions that One Vision (wel, apart from the "[[RuleOfFunny fried chicken]]" line) is about MartinLutherKingJr.
* MetalScream: "In the Lap of the Gods" has a lot of them. Roger Taylor used to perform them live at every concert just to prove they weren't synthesized.
* MindScrew: Applies to a lot of their early and later work. Don't even pretend Bohemian Rhapsody makes sense.
** It sounds like the story of a murder trial. Seriously, it's not that hard.
*** A Guitar World special edition magazine interviewed Freddie's assistant, Peter Freestone, who suggested it might be about Freddie coming to terms with his newfound sexuality, and fearing breaking the news to his then-girlfriend, Mary Austin.
** "39" ''does'' make sense, but seems not to. It helps to know the back story.
*** Seriously. Best song about theoretical Einsteinian space travel-induced time dilation masquerading as a sea shanty [[http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A733619 EVER.]]
* MohsScaleOfRockAndMetalHardness: All the way from 1 to 7.
* TheMusical: ''WeWillRockYou'', surprisingly good for being a jukebox musical but then it helps to have Queen music period.
* NamesTheSame: Roger Taylor sometimes goes by Roger Meddows-Taylor to distinguish himself from the Roger Taylor who played drums in DuranDuran.
** There is a separate Brian May, an Australian who composes [[MadMax film scores]].
* NonIndicativeName: ''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.
* ThePeteBest: Original bassist Tim Staffell.
* PopStarComposer: Queen wrote songs for ''The Highlander'', ''Flash Gordon the Movie'', and 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' ''StarWars'' soundtrack.
** Brian also did the soundtrack for the RiseOfTheRobots fighting game. It was far more epic than the game was.
* ThePowerOfFriendship: Celebrated in "Friends Will Be Friends".
* PornStache: Freddie, during the 80s.
* PosthumousCollaboration: Deliberate on Freddie's part for ''Made in Heaven''. Freddie recorded as many vocals as he could for the band to work with, but they still had to dig deeper than that to make a full album. For example, Brian sings the last verse of "Mother Love" because Freddie didn't finish his vocal.
** And a lot of Freddie's vocal and piano work ''Made in Heaven'' comes from long before 1991. All in all, only three songs are actually written and completely recorded after ''Innuendo''.
* ProtestSong: "I Want It All" was interpreted both as an anti-apartheid song and as an [=LBGT=] anthem, though neither of those meanings were intended by the band.
** The anti-apartheid interpretation is rather ironic in that Queen was one of the few major groups [[http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2005/jan/14/2http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2005/jan/14/2 not to abide]] with the UN cultural boycott on apartheid South Africa, and they ended up fined and blacklisted. Queen members later argued that they weren't a political group and that the crowd was integrated, MissingThePoint on the policy of deinvestment.
** "I Want To Break Free" was also adopted as an LGBT anthem.
* TheQuietOne: John Deacon, almost literally; he was the only member who didn't sing, and said very little in group interviews, generally only speaking when a question was directed specifically to him. Since the band went their separate ways in 1991, John mostly retired from the music industry, only going back into the studio to record the "No-One But You (Only the Good Die Young)" single. He later gave his support to Queen+Paul Rodgers, but declined to take part.
* ReclusiveArtist: 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.
* RefugeInAudacity: "Fat Bottomed Girls". And the promotional stunts of the era, [[MsFanservice with 50 naked women riding bicycles]]. And to top it off, the outrageous (and outrageously expensive), [[SexDrugsAndRockAndRoll cocaine-fueled]] promotional party they 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 TheSexPistols were recording in an opposite studio to Queen in 1977, SidVicious 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."
* SanitySlippageSong: "I'm Going Slightly Mad".
** Also, the traditional song "Oh I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside" which plays at the end of "Seven Seas of Rhye". At least, this is how the musical ''We Will Rock You'' interpreted it.
* SelfBackingVocalist: 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.
* SelfDeprecation: 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"
* '70sHair: Brian May has kept his for more than forty years.
* ShirtlessScene: Freddie had a few in concerts.
* ShoutOut:
** To the MarxBrothers, the albums ''A Night at the Opera'' and ''A Day at the Races'' taking their names from two of their films.
** The music video for "Calling All Girls" was based upon the GeorgeLucas movie ''Film/{{THX 1138}}''.
** The music video for "Radio Ga Ga" was based upon the FritzLang move ''Metropolis'' - which Freddie supplied a song for in a modern overdub.
** "Bring Back That Leroy Brown" (from ''Sheer Heart Attack'') is an homage to Jim Croce, who had died the previous year.
** The "I Want To Break Free" video is a parody of ''CoronationStreet''.
** The lyrics of "Innuendo" (which were started by Freddie, but were mostly Roger's work) are intended as a shout out to "[[LedZeppelin Kashmir]]".
* SixthRanger: 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.
* SopranoAndGravel: 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 [[PinkFloyd 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).
* SpiritualSuccessor: 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 [[YourMileageMayVary 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}}.''
** More notably, the entirety of ''A Day At The Races'' can be thought of as a "sequel" to ''A Night At The Opera''. They're both named after MarxBrothers films, the album art is almost exactly the same with a black background rather than white, and many of the songs parallel each other. "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Somebody to Love", "'39" and "Long Away", "The Prophet's Song" and "White Man", "You're My Best Friend" and "You and I", and very specifically, both albums open with EpicRiff-driven HardRock tunes ("Death on Two Legs (Dedicated to..." and "Tie Your Mother Down").
* StuffyOldSongsAboutTheButtocks: "Fat-Bottomed Girls".
* SubduedSection: Used in too many of their songs to list.
* {{Synthesizeritis}}: They've done some good tracks with synths after they started using them, but there's just no excuse for ''Hot Space'' (other than "Under Pressure") and ''The Miracle''.
* TakeThat: "Scandal" is a take that against the celebrity-obsessed media, who were giving both Freddie and Brian 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 [[PrecisionFStrike motherfucker]] of a gentleman". "Flick of the Wrist", from the preceding album is written along the same lines, and reputedly directed at the same [[PrecisionFStrike motherfucker]].
*** It's a full-blown [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech Reason You Suck Song]]
** "Fight From The Inside" and "Sheer Heart Attack" (both written by Roger) are [[TakeThat TakeThats]] at the then-emerging punk scene.
* TalksLikeASimile: "Don't Stop Me Now."
* ThreeChordsAndTheTruth: Usually averted, as lots of Queen songs have quite a few more than three chords, and Brian May is highly respected for his virtuosity as a guitarist. However, Freddie Mercury joked about it at the 1986 Wembley concert - "''This shitty guitar never plays the chords I want it to play. It only knows three. Let's see what happens.''" - before launching into "'Crazy Little Thing Called Love"
* UnreliableNarrator: [[CaptainObvious "Liar"]]... [[EveryoneIsJesusInPurgatory Maybe]]...
* UrExample: "Stone Cold Crazy" was one of the earliest HardRock songs not to be interchangeable with BluesRock, and it was a precursor to and big influence on several styles of Metal (Speed Metal and Thrash Metal especially). As mentioned above "Dead On Time" falls in here too.
** {{Metallica}} covered "Stone Cold Crazy", releasing it first as a B-side and then on their all-covers album ''Garage Inc.'' They also played it at the Tribute Concert, cementing its status as Metallica's homage/thank you to the band.
* VillainProtagonist: "Bohemian Rhapsody".
* VillainSong: "Gimme the Prize [[{{Highlander}} (Kurgan's Theme)]]"
* [[WasItReallyWorthIt Was It Really]] / WorthIt : 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!'
* WastedSong: 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.
* WeaponOfChoice: The Red Special for Brian. So much so that when he played on Paul Rodgers' set at the "Strat Pack" concert, which was a tribute to the 50th anniversary of the Fender Stratocaster, Brian brought the Red Special along, theme of the concert be damned.
* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome: Queen and only Queen could write a song about something mundane as riding a bike and make it fucking AWESOME.
** "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".
* WordSaladLyrics: 90% of their songs don't really mean anything, they just sound cool.
** Although that's debatable: some sources say Freddie encouraged their (and especially his) "throwaway lyricist" image to avoid being asked to analyze the words in interviews, but many (or at least several) of them were actually very personal.
* YouAreTheNewTrend: Freddie's look throughout the 80's became the stereotypical look for gays, especially the slicked/coiffed hair, moustache, and hairy chest.
----
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 230 (click to see context) from:
** 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.}}''
to:
** 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.}}'' ''{{Pagliacci}}.''
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Added DiffLines:
** 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.}}''
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Added DiffLines:
** "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".
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 135,136 (click to see context) from:
* GadgeteerGenius: Brian May holds a [=Ph.D=] in cosmology - a real one that he actually studied and wrote a thesis for, not an honorary one as so many celebrates have. He also designed and built his guitar, the Red Special, himself. [[MemeticMutation In a cave! With a box of scraps!]]
** There's a lot of truth to the box of scraps bit. The guitar's neck is mostly a piece of wood salvaged from an old fireplace surround, and the tremolo bar is a knitting needle.
** There's a lot of truth to the box of scraps bit. The guitar's neck is mostly a piece of wood salvaged from an old fireplace surround, and the tremolo bar is a knitting needle.
to:
* GadgeteerGenius: Brian May holds a [=Ph.D=] in cosmology Astrophysics - a real one that he actually studied and wrote a thesis for, not an honorary one as so many celebrates have. He also designed and built his guitar, the Red Special, himself. [[MemeticMutation In a cave! With a box of scraps!]]
** There's a lot of truth to the box of scraps bit. The guitar's neck is mostly a piece of wood salvaged from an old fireplace surround, and the tremolo bar is a motorcycle handbrake combined with a knitting needle.
** There's a lot of truth to the box of scraps bit. The guitar's neck is mostly a piece of wood salvaged from an old fireplace surround, and the tremolo bar is a motorcycle handbrake combined with a knitting needle.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 64 (click to see context) from:
** He was probabley bisexual, with the exception of the "daffodil" quote, he identified himself as bi, and had both male and female partners (although seemed to be more into men than women.)
to:
** He was probabley probably bisexual, with the exception of the "daffodil" quote, he identified himself as bi, and had both male and female partners (although seemed to be more into men than women.)
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 107 (click to see context) from:
** "Fat Bottom Girls" and "Bicycle Race" (both released on one single) reference each other; "Bicycle Race" features ''"Fat Bottom Girls will be ridin' today,"'' and "Fat Bottom Girls" has ''"Get on your bikes and ride!"''
to:
** "Fat Bottom Bottomed Girls" and "Bicycle Race" (both released on one single) reference each other; "Bicycle Race" features ''"Fat Bottom Bottomed Girls will be ridin' riding today,"'' and "Fat Bottom Bottomed Girls" has ''"Get on your bikes and ride!"''
** The symmetrical group image featured in the cover of ''Queen II'' (and on the profile pic) was frequently used in videos, including "Bohemian Rhapsody" and an updated one in "One Vision".
Changed line(s) 114 (click to see context) from:
** In a recent documentary about Queen Brian said he actually kind of liked Don't Stop Me Now
to:
Changed line(s) 120 (click to see context) from:
* DaysOfTheWeekSong: ''Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon'' and ''In Just Seven Days.''
to:
* DaysOfTheWeekSong: ''Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon'' and ''In Just Only Seven Days.''
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 189 (click to see context) from:
*** Seriously. Best song about theoretical Einsteinian space travel-induced time dilation masquerading as a sea shanty EVER.
to:
*** Seriously. Best song about theoretical Einsteinian space travel-induced time dilation masquerading as a sea shanty EVER. [[http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A733619 EVER.]]
Changed line(s) 204 (click to see context) from:
** The anti=apartheid interpretation is rather ironic in that Queen was one of the few major groups [[http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2005/jan/14/2http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2005/jan/14/2 not to abide]] with the UN cultural boycott on apartheid South Africa, and they ended up fined and blacklisted. Queen members later argued that they weren't a political group and that the crowd was integrated, MissingThePoint on the policy of deinvestment.
to:
** The anti=apartheid anti-apartheid interpretation is rather ironic in that Queen was one of the few major groups [[http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2005/jan/14/2http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2005/jan/14/2 not to abide]] with the UN cultural boycott on apartheid South Africa, and they ended up fined and blacklisted. Queen members later argued that they weren't a political group and that the crowd was integrated, MissingThePoint on the policy of deinvestment.deinvestment.
** "I Want To Break Free" was also adopted as an LGBT anthem.
** "I Want To Break Free" was also adopted as an LGBT anthem.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 189 (click to see context) from:
*** Seriously. Best song about theoretical Einsteinian space travel-induced time dilation masquerading as a sea shanty [[EVER. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A733619]]
to:
*** Seriously. Best song about theoretical Einsteinian space travel-induced time dilation masquerading as a sea shanty [[EVER. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A733619]] EVER.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 189 (click to see context) from:
*** Seriously. Best [[song about theoretical Einsteinian space travel-induced time dilation maquerading as a sea shanty EVER. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A733619]]
to:
*** Seriously. Best [[song song about theoretical Einsteinian space travel-induced time dilation maquerading masquerading as a sea shanty EVER.[[EVER. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A733619]]
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 181 (click to see context) from:
** Hell, Queen have this all over the place. "Bring Back That Leroy Brown", "Misfire", "39", "Somebody to Love"...
to:
** Hell, Queen have this all over the place. "Bring Back That Leroy Brown", "Misfire", "39", "'39", "Somebody to Love"...
Added DiffLines:
*** Seriously. Best [[song about theoretical Einsteinian space travel-induced time dilation maquerading as a sea shanty EVER. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A733619]]
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Added DiffLines:
** The opening track from ''Jazz'' ("Let Me Entertain You") includes the lyric, "We'll Breakfast at Tiffany's / We'll sing to you in Japanese" as a reference to the song "Teo Toriatte" from the "A Day at the Races" album (which had a chorus sung in phonetic Japanese).
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Added DiffLines:
*** (What I always thought was amazing about that performance was the visual representation of the actual speed of sound. Everyone in the crowd "clap-claps" on beat, but since the crowd itself was so *HUGE*, you could actually see a "wave" passing over the crowd as each row clapped a millisecond later than the one before as the sound reached THEIR ears. It's shiver-worthy once you realize that's what's happening.)
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Added DiffLines:
** Legend had it that when TheSexPistols were recording in an opposite studio to Queen in 1977, SidVicious 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."
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 7,8 (click to see context) from:
Famous British rock band fronted by Freddie Mercury (vocals and piano), with Brian May (guitar, vocals and keyboards), Roger Taylor (drums, vocals, also guitar and bass on studio recordings) and John Deacon (bass, keyboards and guitar on some studio recordings), known for their style which combines hard rock, massed vocal harmonies (from Mercury, May and Taylor; Deacon only supplied backing vocals live), Brian May's complex, intricately arranged and highly overdubbed guitar work, catchy pop melodies, surreal humour and flamboyant, theatrical performances (which the band was steered towards chiefly by Mercury).
to:
Famous British rock band fronted by Freddie Mercury (vocals (vocals, piano and piano), other keyboards), with Brian May (guitar, vocals and keyboards), Roger Taylor (drums, vocals, also guitar and bass on studio recordings) and John Deacon (bass, keyboards and guitar on some studio recordings), known for their style which combines hard rock, massed vocal harmonies (from Mercury, May and Taylor; Deacon only supplied backing vocals live), Brian May's complex, intricately arranged and highly overdubbed guitar work, catchy pop melodies, surreal humour and flamboyant, theatrical performances (which the band was steered towards chiefly by Mercury).
** John Deacon too, tinkering with electronics in his youth and later graduated with a First in electrical engineering. He joined in part because the others were impressed by his skill with equipment.
Changed line(s) 233 (click to see context) from:
* ThreeChordsAndTheTruth: Usually averted, as lots of Queen songs have quite a few more than three chords, and Brian May is highly respected for his virtuosity as a guitarist. However, Freddie Mercury joked about it at the 1986 Wembley concert - "''This shitty guitar never plays the chords I want it to play. It only knows three. Let's see what happens.''" - before launching into "'Crazy Little Thing Called Love".
to:
* ThreeChordsAndTheTruth: Usually averted, as lots of Queen songs have quite a few more than three chords, and Brian May is highly respected for his virtuosity as a guitarist. However, Freddie Mercury joked about it at the 1986 Wembley concert - "''This shitty guitar never plays the chords I want it to play. It only knows three. Let's see what happens.''" - before launching into "'Crazy Little Thing Called Love".Love"
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 132 (click to see context) from:
* GadgeteerGenius: Brian May holds a PHd in cosmology - a real one that he actually studied and wrote a thesis for, not an honorary one as so many celebrates have. He also designed and built his guitar, the Red Special, himself. [[MemeticMutation In a cave! With a box of scraps!]]
to:
* GadgeteerGenius: Brian May holds a PHd [=Ph.D=] in cosmology - a real one that he actually studied and wrote a thesis for, not an honorary one as so many celebrates have. He also designed and built his guitar, the Red Special, himself. [[MemeticMutation In a cave! With a box of scraps!]]
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Added DiffLines:
* '70sHair: Brian May has kept his for more than forty years.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 107 (click to see context) from:
* CoverVersion: They never actually recorded any cover songs on their albums, but they performed plenty of cover songs during live shows. Examples include "[[ElvisPresley Jailhouse Rock]]" on ''Queen Rock Montreal'' and a medley of "[[RickyNelson Hello Mary Lou]]", "[[LeiberAndStoller You're So Square]]", "[[LittleRichard Tutti Frutti]]" and "[[TheSpencerDavisGroup Gimme Some Lovin']]" on ''Live At Wembley''.
to:
* CoverVersion: They never actually recorded any cover songs on their albums, but they performed plenty of cover songs during live shows. Examples include "[[ElvisPresley Jailhouse Rock]]" on ''Queen Rock Montreal'' and a medley of "[[RickyNelson Hello Mary Lou]]", "[[LeiberAndStoller "[[Music/LeiberAndStoller You're So Square]]", "[[LittleRichard Tutti Frutti]]" and "[[TheSpencerDavisGroup Gimme Some Lovin']]" on ''Live At Wembley''.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 87 (click to see context) from:
** On ''A Night At The Opera'', the "brass" and "woodwinds" on "Seaside Rendezvous" are, respectively, Roger and Freddie's ''vocals'', sped up or slowed down on tape. And the temperance jazz band on "Good Company" come entirely from Brian May's ''guitar''. No synthesizers, no samplers,no guitar synthesizers. 16-track analog tape.
to:
** On ''A Night At The Opera'', the "brass" and "woodwinds" on "Seaside Rendezvous" are, respectively, Roger and Freddie's ''vocals'', sped up or slowed down on tape. And the temperance jazz band on "Good Company" come entirely from Brian May's ''guitar''. No synthesizers, no samplers,no samplers, no guitar synthesizers. 16-track analog tape.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Added DiffLines:
** On ''A Night At The Opera'', the "brass" and "woodwinds" on "Seaside Rendezvous" are, respectively, Roger and Freddie's ''vocals'', sped up or slowed down on tape. And the temperance jazz band on "Good Company" come entirely from Brian May's ''guitar''. No synthesizers, no samplers,no guitar synthesizers. 16-track analog tape.
** The overdubs on "Bohemian Rhapsody" were so multilayered (again, on ''sixteen-track analog tape'') that you could see through sections of the tape.
** The overdubs on "Bohemian Rhapsody" were so multilayered (again, on ''sixteen-track analog tape'') that you could see through sections of the tape.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 85 (click to see context) from:
** Their performance at Wembley Stadium during Live Aid 1985. Freddie somehow got ''75,000 people'' to clap in unison during the refrain of "Radio Ga-Ga". (It must be seen to be believed, so go to CrowningMomentOfAwesome to see it.)
to:
** Their performance at Wembley Stadium during Live Aid 1985. Freddie somehow got ''75,000 people'' to clap in unison during the refrain of "Radio Ga-Ga". (It must be seen to be believed, so go to CrowningMomentOfAwesome to see it.)
Changed line(s) 183 (click to see context) from:
** "39" ''does'' make sense, but seems not to. It helps to know [[GeniusBonus the back story]].
to:
** "39" ''does'' make sense, but seems not to. It helps to know [[GeniusBonus the back story]].story.
Deleted line(s) 205,209 (click to see context) :
* ScientificProgressGoesOi: Guitarist Brian May abandoned his [=PhD=] work in astrophysics to be a rock superstar. He recently completed his doctorate.
** Well of course. In a touch of excellent Fridge logic this makes perfect sense: '39' is all about the time dilation effect in Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity, beautifully illustrating the very human tragedy inherent in near speed of light travel.
** He's also the current Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University.
** John Deacon had also graduated as an electrical engineer (he built the 'Deacy amp') and Roger Taylor was studying biology with the intention of becoming a dentist when he joined the band.
** Freddie was the only one who had an academic background in the arts, having a degree in graphic design.
** Well of course. In a touch of excellent Fridge logic this makes perfect sense: '39' is all about the time dilation effect in Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity, beautifully illustrating the very human tragedy inherent in near speed of light travel.
** He's also the current Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University.
** John Deacon had also graduated as an electrical engineer (he built the 'Deacy amp') and Roger Taylor was studying biology with the intention of becoming a dentist when he joined the band.
** Freddie was the only one who had an academic background in the arts, having a degree in graphic design.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 13 (click to see context) from:
* The other band members have observed that Deacon was less influenced by bands like LedZeppelin or TheWho than the rest of them and had preferred {{Music/Soul}} and American {{Funk}} music in his youth. As a result a lot of his songs have a kind of Motown pop style ("You're My Best Friend", "Misfire") or a funky, bass-driven sound ("Another One Bites the Dust"). He wrote his share of rock songs as well ("Spread Your Wings").
to:
* The other band members have observed that Deacon was less influenced by bands like LedZeppelin or TheWho than the rest of them and had preferred {{Music/Soul}} and American {{Funk}} music in his youth. As a result a lot of his songs have a kind of Motown pop style ("You're My Best Friend", "Misfire") or a funky, bass-driven sound ("Another One Bites the Dust"). He also wrote his share of rock songs as well ("Spread several ballads, including "Spread Your Wings").Wings", "You and I" and "Friends Will Be Friends" (the last one in collaboration with Freddie, with whom he also co-wrote "The Miracle").
Changed line(s) 77 (click to see context) from:
* BeyondTheImpossible: During the video for Princes of the Universe, Connor [=MacLeod=] from {{Highlander}} challenges Freddie Mercury to a swordfight. The duel ends in a DRAW. Think about that for a second. . .
to:
* BeyondTheImpossible: During the video for Princes of the Universe, Connor [=MacLeod=] from {{Highlander}} challenges Freddie Mercury to a swordfight. The duel ends in a DRAW. Think about that for a second. . .second...
Changed line(s) 89 (click to see context) from:
** Somewhat subverted in that, even then, Freddie had PermaStubble.
to:
** Somewhat subverted Subverted in that, even then, Freddie had PermaStubble.PermaStubble.
* BlackSheepHit: To some extent, "Another One Bites the Dust", a funk song that was pretty much written because it was the particular style John happened to enjoy. In Britain it was a hit during a period when everything they released shot up the charts, so it generally passed without any particular comment. In America, it's their most successful song and ended up dictating the sound their next album would follow.
* BlackSheepHit: To some extent, "Another One Bites the Dust", a funk song that was pretty much written because it was the particular style John happened to enjoy. In Britain it was a hit during a period when everything they released shot up the charts, so it generally passed without any particular comment. In America, it's their most successful song and ended up dictating the sound their next album would follow.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Added DiffLines:
** He was probabley bisexual, with the exception of the "daffodil" quote, he identified himself as bi, and had both male and female partners (although seemed to be more into men than women.)
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 103 (click to see context) from:
* CoverVersion: They never actually recorded any cover songs on their albums, but they performed plenty of cover songs during live shows. Examples include "[[ElvisPresley Jailhouse Rock]]" on ''Queen Rock Montreal'' and a medley of "[[RickyNelson Hello Mary Lou]]", "You're So Square", "[[LittleRichard Tutti Frutti]]" and "[[TheSpencerDavisGroup Gimme Some Lovin']]" on ''Live At Wembley''.
to:
* CoverVersion: They never actually recorded any cover songs on their albums, but they performed plenty of cover songs during live shows. Examples include "[[ElvisPresley Jailhouse Rock]]" on ''Queen Rock Montreal'' and a medley of "[[RickyNelson Hello Mary Lou]]", "You're "[[LeiberAndStoller You're So Square", Square]]", "[[LittleRichard Tutti Frutti]]" and "[[TheSpencerDavisGroup Gimme Some Lovin']]" on ''Live At Wembley''.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 229 (click to see context) from:
** And then there's "Death On Two Legs (Dedicated to...)", a [[{{Understatement}} 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 [[PrecisionFStrike motherfucker]] of a gentleman". "Flick of the Wrist", from the preceding album is written along the same lines, and reputedly directed at the same [[PrecisionFStrike motherfucker]].
to:
** And then there's "Death On Two Legs (Dedicated to...)", a [[{{Understatement}} SCATHING]] 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 [[PrecisionFStrike motherfucker]] of a gentleman". "Flick of the Wrist", from the preceding album is written along the same lines, and reputedly directed at the same [[PrecisionFStrike motherfucker]].
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 35 (click to see context) from:
to:
* ''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eM8Ss28zjcE&feature=related I Want To Break Free]]'', which was a huge hit in Britain but barely heard in America thanks to the video being [[BannedInChina banned]]. (Whether it was the ballerinas in skintight leotards performing an erotic modern dance, or [[WholesomeCrossdresser all four members of the band appearing in drag]], remains a mystery for the ages.)
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 217 (click to see context) from:
** Some fans say the "I Want To Break Free" video is a parody of a local soap opera.
to:
** Some fans say the The "I Want To Break Free" video is a parody of ''CoronationStreet''.
** The lyrics of "Innuendo" (which were started by Freddie, but were mostly Roger's work) are intended as alocal soap opera.shout out to "[[LedZeppelin Kashmir]]".
** The lyrics of "Innuendo" (which were started by Freddie, but were mostly Roger's work) are intended as a
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Added DiffLines:
*** Critics at the time had always equated Queen with fascism, due to the hold Freddie had over the audience coming as one, and due to the critics' dismissal of the kind of arena rock Queen did so well. WordOfGod mentions that One Vision (wel, apart from the "[[RuleOfFunny fried chicken]]" line) is about MartinLutherKingJr.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Added DiffLines:
**Some fans say the "I Want To Break Free" video is a parody of a local soap opera.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 211,212 (click to see context) from:
* ShoutOut: To the MarxBrothers, the albums ''A Night at the Opera'' and ''A Day at the Races'' taking their names from two of their films.
** The music video for "Calling All Girls" was based upon the GeorgeLucas movie ''THX1138''
** The music video for "Calling All Girls" was based upon the GeorgeLucas movie ''THX1138''
to:
* ShoutOut: ShoutOut:
** To the MarxBrothers, the albums ''A Night at the Opera'' and ''A Day at the Races'' taking their names from two of their films.
** The music video for "Calling All Girls" was based upon the GeorgeLucas movie''THX1138''''Film/{{THX 1138}}''.
** To the MarxBrothers, the albums ''A Night at the Opera'' and ''A Day at the Races'' taking their names from two of their films.
** The music video for "Calling All Girls" was based upon the GeorgeLucas movie
Changed line(s) 242,243 (click to see context) from:
----
<<|{{Musicians}}|>>
<<|{{Musicians}}|>>
to:
<<|{{Musicians}}|>>
