Queen – The Best

After the contracts were signed, the record company exec must have walked away thinking Queen would either make millions or crash big time. Queen took a bit to develop. But by their third album, “Sheer Heart Attack,” they were on top in their native U.K. and getting noticed in the U.S.

The next two albums “A Night At The Opera” and “A Day At The Races” (the titles taken from two of the Marx Brothers’ more popular films) showed Queen at their peak with Freddie Mercury’s intense but layered vocals and Brian May’s scorching guitar.

“Opera” has “You’re My Best Friend” and the classic or classical “Bohemian Rhapsody.” “Races” features “Tie Your Mother Down” and “Somebody To Love.”

“News Of The World” followed in ’77 containing “We Will Rock You/We Are The Champions.” In ’80, Queen came out with “The Game” which contained two hit singles, the throbbing “Another One Bites The Dust” and the Rock revival “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.”

#10. Radio Ga Ga (Live Aid)

The studio version was released in 1984. Queen played a shorter, up-tempo version of the song during the Live Aid concert in1985 at Wembley Stadium where Queen’s “show-stealing performance” had 72,000 people clapping in unison. It was the second song the band performed at Live Aid after opening with “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

#9. Another One Bites The Dust

Written by bassist John Deacon the song went to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks. Deacon’s thumping bass line was said to have been inspired by the Chic song “Good Times.”

Sylvester Stallone wanted to use the song in “Rocky III,” but the group denied permission. So Stallone went with Survivor’s “Eye Of The Tiger.”

#8. Stone Cold Crazy

Written by all four members, it was performed live at almost every Queen concert from 1974 to 1978 despite being a “Sheer Heart Attack” album track and not released as a single.

#7. You’re My Best Friend

Deacon wrote the song for and about his wife.  However, frontman Freddie Mercury didn’t like the electric piano sound and played a grand piano when they performed the song in concert.

#6. We Are the Champions

Written by Mercury, with audience participation in mind, Mercury said the “We” in the title refers to everyone who is singing it. Guitarist Brian May called the song “unifying and positive.”

“We Are the Champions” has become an oft used anthem at sporting events.

#5. Killer Queen

The song, about a high-class call girl, was the turning point. “It was the song that best summed up our kind of music, and a big hit, and we desperately needed it as a mark of something successful happening for us… I was always very happy with this song,” noted May.

#4. Under Pressure (featuring David Bowie)

Deacon created the bass line. But after a dinner break, Bowie inadvertently changed the riff to its definitive version.

The riff he was sampled by Rapper Vanilla Ice for his 1990 single “Ice Ice Baby.” Vanilla Ice initially did not credit Bowie or Queen for the sample, resulting in a lawsuit that gave Bowie and Queen songwriting credit. 

#3. Crazy Little Thing Called Love

The song took Mercury five or ten minutes to write. “I did that on the guitar, which I can’t play for nuts, and in one way it was quite a good thing because I was restricted, knowing only a few chords,” offered Mercury in an interview. “It’s a good discipline because I simply had to write within a small framework.”

#2. We Will Rock You

The music video was filmed in the back garden of drummer Roger Taylor’s mansion.

“We shot it on the grounds of a country house I’d just bought in Surrey and we hadn’t completed the sale, so we weren’t allowed in the house,” remembered Taylor. “We figured, ‘we might as well shoot it here.’ It was absolutely freezing cold and we did three takes.”

#1. Bohemian Rhapsody

No surprise. It’s Queen’s signature song.

Mercury referred to “Bohemian Rhapsody” as a “mock opera” that resulted from the combination of three songs he had written.

May said the band thought that Mercury’s song outline was “intriguing and original, and worthy of work” but this song “was all in Freddie’s mind.”

A Rolling Stone readers’ poll ranked Mercury’s vocal performance as the greatest in Rock history.

Queen:

Freddie Mercury – Vocals

Brian May – Guitar

John Deacon – Bass

Roger Taylor – Drums

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