With a hefty number of pop hits, (which the band was still fully committed to writing at the time they began work on The Miracle), "Was It All Worth It" kicks out the jams as a guitar-bass-drums number. It holds up as the best thing on the album and even with plenty of keyboard tinting, it still may be the heaviest Queen song of all time. Roger Taylor's immense drum sound, (which is immense here even by his steadfast standards), certainly plays a role.
Since both sides of Queen's sophomore album Queen II act as a medley, this provides an ideal time to throw two tracks together for inclusion on this list with the instrumental intro "Procession" seguing directly into "Father to Son". Both are Brian May songs, the former a quiet funeral march and the latter a part acoustic, part heavy, and a typically grandiose piece with a big chorus. May ran his guitar through John Deacon's custom amp for both, giving it that somewhat muted sound during the quiet moments.
Out of all the songs that all the songwriters penned about John Lennon's tragic death, easily the best of them was "Life Is Real (Song for Lennon)" off Hot Space. Freddie rarely came up with lyrics before music or a vocal melody, but this was a rare exception. The end result is gorgeously styled after Lennon's own generally simple piano ballads, with odes in the lyrics and the opening three single note pattern that is meant to mimic both "(Just Like) Starting Over" and "Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)".
Queen II is remarkable in may respects, one of which is that it is easily the most unified of the band's albums conceptually. Brian May's "White Queen (As It Began)" is as lavish and haunting as any moment from their history, with towering vocal harmonies, floating melodies, big ole guitar flourishes, and mythical lyrics inspired by a girl that May had a biology class and was enamored with. It is also one of several Queen songs to feature their band name in the title, because when you are utilizing medieval fairy tale tropes in your lyrics, the word "queen" is bound to show up.
Two albums in a row with two Brian May songs titled "Son and Daughter" and "Father to Son", almost covering all angles of the family household dynamic. This is certainly one of the sickest Queen guitar riffs and arguably their most typical 70s hard rock song. Its sound and structure both solidify the band as one of the would-be originators of what would eventually blossom into heavy metal. This was played at the first ever Queen concert and was the original home for May's live solo spot, which later would get properly recorded in studio on "Brighton Rock".
Exhibit a billion as to why Brian May could very well be the most ingenious guitar player in all of rock music can be found on A Night at the Opera's "Good Company". Written and performed on his dad's "Genuine Aloha" banjo ukulele, May had the idea to use up hours upon hours of studio time to make his Red Special sound like an entire Dixie Land jazz orchestra for the guitar solo. It is jaw-dropping stuff, not just for how wonderful it is, but also for the "How the fuck did he even do that?" quality which is admirable to say the very least.
A Night at the Opera's most pretty moment "Love of My Life" was a Queen song that musically went through one of the biggest changes from its studio to live rendition. Written and performed on piano by Freddie as an ode to his long-lasting relationship with Mary Austin, Brian May played harp on it even though he had no real prior experience with the instrument, instead playing the chords painstakingly one at a time. When it came time to do it every night on tour though, they logically said "fuck that noise" and re-arranged it for 12-string guitar, where it sounded just as enchanting.
The strongest and most inseparable Queen medley is that which appears on the first side of Sheer Heart Attack, "Tenement Funster/Flick of the Wrist/Lily of the Valley". All three songs were recorded separately with Roget Taylor penning "Funster" and Freddie Mercury the latter two. On paper, each piece is significantly different from each other, with "Funster" being more on the funky and sexy side, "Flick" more up-tempo, heavy, and "single-ready", and "Lily" the pretty, piano carol to finish it all off.
After dipping his toes into the songwriting pool with Sheer Heart Attack's understated "Misfire", John Deacon returned with the mega-hit "You're My Best Friend" on the proceeding A Night at the Opera album. He wrote and played it on a Wurlitzer electric piano, (an instrument which Freddie openly hated), and it acts as the album's laid back, three-minute pop/love song, directly inspired by Deacon's wife. Roger Taylor's backwards drum fills are a noticeable, pleasant touch as well.
Queen almost had not one but two collaborations with David Bowie released on Hot Space as the latter provided a spoken word backing track to Freddie Mercury and John Deacon's mellow funk gem "Cool Cat". Bowie was not a fan of the finished results so it was removed at the eleventh hour, which is all the better really as it is more or less unnecessary. This song is funny in that my brother singled it out ages ago to me as one of the lamest Queen songs, only to have me light up and proclaim how wonderful it actually was. A sentiment that I clearly still hold true.
The finest of Roger Taylor's lead vocal composition is Jazz' close-to-title-track "More of That Jazz". Taylor once again most likely played all of the instruments on it, hitting some of his highest non-harmony vocal notes as well. Slow, swampy, and one of the more stripped-down, groove oriented Queen songs, it marks a pleasant departure from their more trademark material. It also features a brief montage of several other songs on the album near the end, acting as the ideal finale for the whole record.
In Queen's beginnings, Freddie Mercury brought in what would transform into "Liar", (originally titled "Lover"), and the rest of the band embellished it to become a concert standard for nearly the rest of the decade. At nearly six and a half minutes, it was the longest song on their debut and would occasionally stretch to ten plus minutes in a such a live setting. It also represents them at their collective heaviness, with a vocal/cowbell breakdown, a brief bass lead, structural turnovers, and of course vocal harmonies a plenty.
While Brian May was spending weeks figuring out how to make his guitar sound like brass and woodwind instruments in "Good Company", Freddie Mercury and Roger Taylor were equally and rigorously making their own voices sound like such things on "Seaside Rendezvous". The song is a vaudevillian romp that only Freddie would have the bold silliness to compose. Speaking of silly, he and Roger performed the entire "horn" section bridge with their mouths, then adding a tap dancing solo with their fingers. Those were the days.
Probably the best song that Roger Taylor wrote during the first half of the band's career was "Sheer Heart Attack", which was only an idea of a song when said album was made, thus finally finding a home a few years later on News of the World. While The Sex Pistols were recording Never Mind the Bullocks at an adjacent studio at the exact same time, Queen, (sans John Deacon, whose bass guitar duties Taylor himself once again laid down), ended up tracking their answer to the punk movement with "Sheer". Along with "Stone Cold Crazy", it stands as the most aggressive of all Queen songs.
One of the biggest Queen singles, (released prior to Hot Space though still included on said album), "Under Pressure" marks one of the only collaborations the band ever partook of with a name musician, being David Bowie. They had invited Bowie over to their studio in Monreux to work on something which they had called "Feel Like", all gentleman jointly participated on the music and lyrics that would become the finished product. Thanks to John Deacon's crazy simple bass hook, (which he nearly forgot forever when they took a break from jamming on it), as well as Freddie and Bowie's outstanding call and response vocal improvising, it has remained one of their most enduring songs.
As far as the other major name collaboration that Queen had, that would be Steve Howe's flamenco guitar work on the Innuendo title track. At six and a half minutes, "Innuendo" is the longest single that the band ever put out, and it is the most dynamic and complex on any of their later-era albums. The bulk of it was gradually worked on by Brian, Roger, and John, with probably one of Brian's top ten ever riffs present. Meanwhile, Freddie and producer David Richards extensively put together the bridge section, one of Mercury's many notable opera-based pieces. He and Taylor then finished more of the lyrics and melodies, making it all a haunting, collaborative epic.
Certainly one of the most outstanding album-only tracks in Queen's discography is The Game's "Sail Away Sweet Sister". This is another that was never played live and never released in any form as a single, but it easily triumphs. This goes back to the beginning for me, as it was one of the first Queen songs that I ever heard and one that my brother championed and played the shit out of way back when. Brian May composed and sang most of it, (with Freddie handling that superb bridge and all of the piano), plus the lyrical guitar solo is on the prolonged list of May's most pristine.
Though sharing a song title with the Sheer Heart Attack finale "In the Lap of the Gods...Revisited", the other such song featuring its words is otherwise substantially different, outside of the fact that each could be accurately described as a "ballad". Also, neither song follows each other so grouping them together was ill-advised here. This "Lap" has Roger Taylor's dog-whistle high notes and you can hardly miss them; his ethereal harmonies stealing the show more or less.
Brian May as storyteller emerged on A Night at the Opera's "'39". One of the only outer-space folk songs in existence anywhere and damn near the best song that May ever sang, the guitarist was and is an astronomy nerd, (decades later he studied for and achieved a PhD in astrophysics), and chose to write about a group of astronauts on a year-long journey that in turn became a hundred year long one once they came back. So Christopher Nolan swiped its story for Interstellar is what I'm saying.
Many bands, albums, songs, or even live performances can be credited as setting the course for what heavy metal would become. Queen's "Stone Cold Crazy" is a solid entry into such early, genre-defining terrain, to the point where no one batted an eye when Metallica covered it years later. For anyone who likes headbanging, assaulting guitar riffs and rapid-fire a cappella vocals joining forces, this has you covered.
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