The Week in Queen (3)

Personally, I think Queen has an impressively deep discography, especially considering it was a grand total of 18 years between their debut album and Freddie Mercury’s death; there are bands with over two or three or four decades worth of recording existence under their belts who have fewer solid tracks to show for it. I would hazard a guess that Queen has at least twelve songs that pretty much everyone who had standard Western levels of pop culture exposure in the 80’s would recognize. (“Killer Queen”, “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “You’re My Best Friend”, “Somebody to Love”, “We Are the Champions”, “We Will Rock You”, “Bicycle Race”, “Fat Bottomed Girls”, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”, “Another One Bites the Dust”, “Under Pressure”, and “I Want It All”) As is often the case with the free-floating constant overstimulation of our world of radio and tv and movies and whatnot, I’ll also grant that most non-obsessive people might not know all of those songs by heart or even by name, or realize that they are Queen songs. I’m just saying if you played any one of those songs, a person would be more likely than not to nod along in a way that indicates it triggers some memory or other.

Of course, as is distressingly often the case, just because Queen has achieved near-ubiquity on throwback radio (and sports venues and car commercials &c.) doesn’t mean that the full scope of their oeuvre is well-represented these days. “Bohemian Rhapsody” will live forever, and so will “We Will Rock You”/”We Are the Champions” but I concede that if you flip the question around and just ask people to name songs by Queen off the top of their head, rather than jarring their memory by playing selected samples, drawing a blank after the first three or four monster hits would be perfectly understandable. Depending on how long this experiment of mine goes on, I’ll be curious to see not just how many days in a given span of time include me hearing Queen somewhere, but how the numbers break out for each song. So stayed tuned for that thrilling bit of datacrunching.

Speaking of numbers, in case you were curious, here are my personal Top Five Favorite Queen Songs. (To the shock of exactly no one I’m sure, it starts off with deeper cuts outside the dozen canonical singles I rattled off above, ‘cause that’s how I roll, but it comes around to the universally acclaimed again eventually.)

5. "Stone Cold Crazy" This song got a boost in my awareness when Metallica covered it in the early 90's, during the most full-throated phase of my interest in all things Hetfield and Ulrich. But the original is pretty badass in and of itself.

4. "Princes of the Universe" The de facto themesong of the movie Highlander, as well as numerous RPG-inspired soundtracks assembled by my geek friends and I over the years. If superheroes had a national anthem, this would be it.

3. "Don’t Stop Me Now" Without a doubt my favorite comic setpiece in the movie Shaun of the Dead is the one where the camera tracks in a circle around the threesome beating the hell out of a zombie in the Winchester, not merely set to this song but with each blow perfectly synchronized to the song. Musically, this song is impeccable, but isn't that kind of the point of most Queen songs? So it's the Shaun of the Dead bit that pushes it up so high.

2. "Under Pressure" Queen and the Thin White Duke? Brilliant. Like many Queen tunes, it's all about the build-up to the triumphant climax. This one does it better than almost any other, except ...

1. "Somebody to Love" I am so into this song that whenever I hear it I throw myself unreservedly into the attempt to sing along with it at the top of my lungs, even though that is essentially impossible. Overlapping call-and-response between Freddie and a full choir with non-repeating phrasings and rhythms, yeah, good luck with that trainwreck. Nonetheless if I ever learn to play the piano I will eventually turn my attentions to this song and figuring out a way to arrange it for solo performance. I will!

To the Queendown!

Monday, 6:00 am: "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" on Big 100 FM as I left for work. Due to the Veteran's Day holiday I had to drive all the way out to the Metro, which gave me some extra radio-listening time, but I just wanted to note that even if I had been on my usual schedule, the song would have fallen within my shorter drivetime.

Monday, 7:45 pm: "Another One Bites the Dust" on Big 100 FM during the little girl's settling-down-to-sleep musical interlude. Once again this was second-hand via the baby monitor, and also accompanied by a long meaningful look from my wife, also within earshot. She is on-board with my continuing field research.

Tuesday, 5:35 pm: "Bohemian Rhapsody" on 102.7 Jack FM while driving the kids home from daycare.

Wednesday, 3:55 pm: "Somebody to Love" on 102.7 Jack FM as soon as I got in the car to drive home from the Metro station, and boy did I need it. Dentist's appointment followed by hellish 66/Metro commute in the morning, and another Orange Line ride back out a few hours later? Oy.

Thursday, 9:50 am: "Bohemian Rhapsody" on the streaming music service in the minimart connected to the lobby of my building, when I went down to get a mid-morning Coke.

Friday: Queen-free.

Saturday, 12:35 pm: "Another One Bites the Dust" on Big 100 FM as I was getting the little girl settled for her midday room. So I was actually in the room with the radio, not listening through the monitor.

Sunday: Queen-free (despite a good 30 to 45 minutes listening to the 70's on 7 on Sirius XM around dinner time).