Award Snub: They have yet to be elected and inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but at least the 2009 Brit Award for Best Live Performance was won (deservedly), and in 2011 they got their long overdue Grammy (Best Metal Performance of 2010, "El Dorado").
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The upbeat and happy instrumental section in the otherwise dark and depressing "The Man Who Would Be King".
While very few people would deny that Bruce Dickinson is technically a superior singer to Paul Di'Anno, opinions are divided when it comes to the live performances of the first two albums, with some arguing that while Dickinson does a great job, Di'Anno's grittier and more aggressive voice was simply a better match for that sound.
"The Red and the Black" seems to be the most divisive song on The Book of Souls. Either it's a Harris-penned masterpiece with a nostalgic vibe thanks to some "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and "Alexander the Great" nods, or it's yet another Harris song that goes on for way too long, relies too much on traditional melodies, and suffers from an instrumental section that seems to exist to pad the song's length out to 13 minutes. The fact that said instrumental section is a whopping 6 minutes long doesn't help matters either. Both sides can agree, though, that it makes a killer live song.
Outside of Australia, few people know that "Women in Uniform" is a cover of a hit song by Skyhooks.
Janick Gers wrote the riff that opens "2 Minutes to Midnight" for a song by his previous band White Spirit, called "Midnight Chaser". Adrian Smith, a friend of Gers, borrowed the riff with Gers' permission.
"Bring Your Daughter... to the Slaughter" was originally a solo Bruce Dickinson song for the soundtrack of A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child. The original version won a Golden Raspberry Award for "worst original song" and is mostly forgotten, the Iron Maiden version became their only UK number-one single.
"The Angel and the Gambler", a 9 minute song which ends with 7 straight repetitions of its chorus (the single shortens it to just 2).note According to Steve, this is for the blackjack cards, still isn't an excuse
And now, a fan with too much time on his hands has made a 24 minute version.
Also "Brighter than a Thousand Suns" has many false endings.
"The Red and the Black" has an instrumental section that goes on for 6 minutes.
Epic Riff: Many, such as "Aces High", from Powerslave; "Wasted Years", from Somewhere In Time; "Iron Maiden", from Iron Maiden; and "Paschendale", from Dance of Death from 3:19 to 4:30. At times the Lead Bassist is the one with the riff, such as in "Running Free".
Even Better Sequel: The song "22 Acacia Avenue", which is sub-titled (in the original liner notes only) as "The Continuing Saga of Charlotte the Harlot" which was the name of a song on their debut album.
"H" for Adrian Smith. Say with an English accent to understand why.
"'Arry" for Steve Harris, first said to him by Nicko, then adopted by the fanbase.
Song-wise, aside of the acronyms, "11:58" or "23:58" for "2 Minutes To Midnight" and "666" for "The Number of the Beast". And also "Paschendale" is known by some as "Paschen-fucking-dale"
Fanon Discontinuity: The only albums which don't alienate fans are the ones going from The Number of the Beast to Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. Otherwise:
No Maiden existed before Bruce Dickinson arrived. (Denial of the Di'Anno era)
No Maiden existed without Adrian Smith and Bruce Dickinson (Denial of the Blaze Bayley eranote note the "and"; that means No Prayer for the Dying and Fear of the Dark, which had Dickinson but not Smith, are not included in this definition)
No Maiden existed after Adrian Smith left (Denial of everything post-Seventh Son of a Seventh Son... sometimes including the six albums in the Turn of the Millennium)
Growing the Beard: While Iron Maiden and Killers are generally well-liked among Maiden fans, many believe that the band didn't really get great until Bruce Dickinson took over as lead vocalist.
"2 Minutes to Midnight" became this in 2018 after the actual Doomsday Clock's hands were once again set to two minutes to... well, midnight. Or its subsequent reductions to 100 and 90 seconds in 2020 and 2023 respectively.
"Mother Russia" closing lyrics as this song was written right after the fall of the Communist bloc. This being the final track on the bleakly titled No Prayer for the Dyingnote Coming after a history of bleak, pessimistic, or cynical closing tracks to Maiden albums, this album ends on a relatively high note., this track at least suggested some possible optimism about Russia's future. But well before it's current problems and the popular perception that the Russian people willingly chose authoritarianism as the answer to the chaos and instability that followed the fall of the Communist regime.
Mother Russia Dance of the Tsars Hold up your heads Remember who you are Can you release The anger the grief? Can you be happy Now your people are free.
"The Ides of March" being a reinterpretation of Samson's "Thunderburst" becomes this with Bruce Dickinson's (who sung in Samson before joining Iron Maiden) arrival a year later.
Adrian asking Janick Gers (then in White Spirit) permission to use the riff of "Midnight Chaser" for "2 Minutes to Midnight" becomes this with Janick replacing Adrian in 1990 and Adrian's return in 1999 with the condition of Janick staying in the band.
In The Early Days, Part 2, Bruce is talking with a fan in a concert of the World Slavery Tour, the marathonic presentation tour in support of Powerslave. The fan said that he would like to play heavy metal with synthesizers, to which Bruce replied that "heavy metal cannot be played with synthesizers". The two following albums, Somewhere In Time and Seventh Son of a Seventh Son make heavy use of synthesizers.
Once, Adrian said that he expected Iron Maiden to do 15 albums before quitting. While the title of Maiden's 15th album is The Final Frontier, it ended up not being their final album.
Jerkass Woobie: The protagonist of "Hallowed Be Thy Name" is implied to have committed a horrible crime that has lead to being sentenced to death, but his despair and existential dread make him sympathetic.
Misattributed Song: No, they didn't do covers of "The Ripper", "The Zoo" nor they have a song called "Silver Wings"! And "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" is sung by Bruce Dickinson but it's NOT a song of the band. Neither are any songs which Bruce did outside of Maiden. (Read: His solo career.)
And then there's the whole 2015 fiasco surrounding an Attick Demons song called "City of Golden Gates", which was misattributed to Maiden. Maiden fans somehow managed to turn this into a Rickroll.
Mis-blamed: Blaze Bayley is often pinpointed as the scapegoat for the dip in quality that The X Factor and Virtual XI represent, even though a) the beginning of said dip can be traced as far as No Prayer for the Dying, with Bruce still in the band, b) Blaze was chosen as the band's singer by the rest of the band, Lead Bassist Steve Harris at the forefront, and c) he had minimal input, contributing on just 5 tracks to the 11-track TXF and 3 to the 8-track effort VXI, with Harris having input on almost every song of these albums. This status was further cemented by his highly-consistent solo career, where, while still not reaching the legendary status of the then-reunited Maiden, he still put up albums that were way better received than his Maiden-era efforts.
Paul Di'Anno left. Then Bruce Dickinson came. Nowadays, he's almost universally regarded as better than Di'Anno. Even Di'Anno himself considers Bruce a superior singer to him, especially as the material the band was writing at that point was more suited to someone with Bruce's range.
Adrian Smith to Dennis Stratton, which helped the latter become sort of a footnote.
In a lesser case, as much as Clive Burr is well-liked and hailed as a good drummer, he is eclipsed by replacement Nicko McBrain, who hasn't left ever since while causing a great impression with both his wild playing and being Fun Personified.
Back in 1982, Maiden put out a little song called "The Number of the Beast". Based on either a Nathaniel Hathorne story or a nightmare Harris had. To this day, many people still think they're evil Satanists.
Another victim of this is Blaze Bayley, who, despite his excellent solo career, will always be remembered as the Maiden singer who tried to replace Bruce Dickinson and failed.
Paul Di'Anno spent a few years trying to carve a solo career for himself and eventually just gave up and focused on playing Iron Maiden songs live. Although he says he's not bitter in interviews, he clearly is.
Once Original, Now Common: They have so many knockoffs and have been copied so many times that it can be hard for younger, newer listeners to get what is so special about them.
Paranoia Fuel: "Fear of the Dark". *Shiver* Every so often, the lyrics replace "someone" with "something". Of course, it's implied the narrator feels this way because he binged on horror films.
Blaze Bayley replaced Bruce Dickinson in the mid-nineties. A part of the fandom still bashes him despite the fact that the band chose him.
Early on, Janick Gers replaced Adrian Smith during The '90s and felt into this, though less so now that Adrian returned to the band.
Many fans still consider Nicko McBrain to be this to Clive Burr. Burr was a more technically gifted drummer than McBrain, and was also by all accounts a Nice Guy. There's also a theory that Nicko played backstage politics to get Clive Burr kicked out of the band so he could take his place. And of course there's the Never Speak Ill of the Dead reason.
Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: While the Blaze Bayley albums still aren't held in very high regard by fans, many will agree that his solo material more than makes up for it as almost every album he's released since leaving Maiden has received high praise from critics and fans alike.
Signature Song: "Run to the Hills" or "The Number of the Beast" are commonly brought up, though "Hallowed Be Thy Name", "The Trooper", and "2 Minutes to Midnight" are considered strong contenders. There's also "Wrathchild" and the self-titled song for Di'Anno's run (which is the most-played song in all their concert tours). Outside the '80s material is "Fear of the Dark" for the '90s and "The Wicker Man" for the '00s.
The cover art for ''Dance of Death''◊, filled to the brim with untextured, low-poly models straight out of the early 2000s to the point of being overwhelming, is often regarded as one of the worst pieces of album art in music history, to the point of hilarity. The album itself was ultimately still well-received overall in spite of this.
Special Effect Failure: The video for "Be Quick Or Be Dead" has a very bad CG of an anvil falling on a surface and morphing into a bank check addressed to Eddie; a few seconds later the CG is used again, in reverse.
Squick: "To kill the unborn in the woooo-ooomb!" from the chorus of "2 Minutes to Midnight".
Also from "2 Minutes to Midnight": "As the reasons for the carnage cut their meat and lick the gravy/We oil the jaws of the war machine and feed it with our babies."
Sweet Dreams Fuel: Yep, even they have some. "Strange World" is a serene, slow paced ballad with whimsical lyrics sung gently by Paul. It surprisingly makes a good lullaby for children.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The tour for The Final Frontier focused on the 2000's material. Parts of the Broken Base and many reviewers criticized because staples such as "The Trooper" had to leave the setlist.
Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Aside from the new singer, the biggest complaint about The X Factor is how relentlessly dark and slow in tempo it gets from "Fortunes Of War" onwards. Most tracks in follow-up Virtual XI also count. A Matter Of Life And Death, being aside from the opening track long dirges on the horrors of war, sometimes gets this assessment too (with some of the older fans noting that it is quite similar to The X Factor, but reception was more positive because it was Bruce singing.).
Unconventional Learning Experience: Given their penchant for writing Filk Songs and stuff based on historical events, many of their fans have discovered various topics while rocking on.
Viewer Pronunciation Confusion: In The Early Years documentary, the early singer Dennis Wilcock's name is consistently pronounced as Denny Wilcox by the various members in lineups containing him. This is more of a cockney spoonerism than a stage name in its own right, but comes across as strange if you've only been reading it.
Although every fan and critic in 1992 thought Fear of the Dark was a million times better than No Prayer for the Dying in both production and songwriting, many fans still thought it was a pretty mediocre Maiden album with too much filler and Bruce Dickinson still singing like he is auditioning for a Thrash Metal band. However, it is not uncommon for fans today to think of the album as a good album in its own right, mainly due to the album containing many fan favourites, such as "Afraid to Shoot Strangers" and of course, the title track.
Bruce himself as lead singer, believe it or not. While nowadays it's more or less universally agreed that he's the best singer in the band, there was initially a small, but vocal, backlash against him being in the band, since Di'Anno was then viewed as one of the aspects that shaped the feel of the first two albums. The fact that Bruce had only been in a few obscure bands didn't help, and neither did the fact that in initial tours he was singing Di'Anno, although he eventually won a good chunk of fans round with new material, and the rest is history.
While still not highly regarded as the band's other work, the Blaze Bayley albums (The X Factor and Virtual XI) have been seen in a more favorable light in recent years, with some fans praising the darker lyrical material while still keeping the essence of their earlier work, with tracks like "Sign of the Cross" and "The Clansman" being lauded as some of the bands best songs. It helps too that, much like the Paul Di’Anno material, they still perform a few tracks from that era with Bruce Dickinson during some of their live shows, and that Blaze himself was Rescued from the Scrappy Heap thanks to his highly consistent post-Maiden solo career.
The Woobie: Many of the POV characters in their songs, if they aren't evil. And sometimes still if they are.
), and in 2011 they got their long overdue Grammy (Best Metal Performance of 2010, "El Dorado").#/media/File%3AIron_Maiden-Dance_of_Death.jpg){kind=small}
