Editor’s warning — The following might include too much Queen love in one sitting. Please proceed cautiously.

Commentary by Devin McCue, Sumner Newscow — This week, I had the pleasure of seeing Bohemian Rhapsody starring Rami Melek as the immortal Freddie Mercury.  Of course, the film had a wonderful soundtrack, but it could have just been a lineup of Queen hits for 90 minutes and we all would have been happy.  Instead, it decided to be an emotionally gripping story of the Tanzanian, gay man who grew into fame in the late 70s and the rollercoaster of events that shaped his brief existence from there.  Freddie Mercury was one of the most talented singers of his generation and a gifted song writer at that, but the movie also shows just how much it was a band effort rather than all on their lead singer’s back.

In short, Bohemian Rhapsody is a great film and you should trample over one another trying to go see it.  But after watching the movie, it had me pondering one important question: is Queen the best band of all time?

They certainly have the pedigree.  Here’s a non-exhaustive list of some of their accomplishments:

• The BBC voted them the greatest British band of all time (looking at you Beatles)
• An industry poll ranked their 1985 Live Aid performance as the best live show in history
• Queen has spent 1,322 weeks or 26 years on the UK album charts
• They’re Greatest Hits I album sold over 600K more copies than Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely-Hearts Club to become the highest selling record ever
• All four members are inducted in the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame
• They’ve had no less than 4 songs inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame

I could keep going, but you see my point.  Queen have outsold, out preformed, and musically outlasted any of their competition from their era, or any before or following.  The 70s was the golden era of rock and roll and Queen was at the heart of it, yet still had the guts and the range to explore outside their genre and experiment with pop, electronic, and even opera.

You could also argue they were the only band to ever successfully come out of the Disco-era unscathed.  “Another One Bites the Dust” is an arguably great disco jam, but it resists the urge to over synthesize itself and stays true to Queen’s bread and butter and uses a killer guitar riff instead of a ABBA-esque explosion of sound as it’s hook.  Along with some Earth, Wind, and Fire, ABBA, and BeeJees hits, Another One Bites the Dust is my pick for the best song of the disco era.  And while we’re on the subject of Queen owning a particular type of song here are some more Queen hits that encapsulate a particular feeling:

• Best pump up song: We Will Rock You
• Best victory song: We are the Champions
• Best swagger song: Another One Bites the Dust (last time I’ll mention it, promise)
• Best movie montage song: You’re My Best Friend
• Best coming out song: I Want to Break Free
• Best rock anthem: Bohemian Rhapsody

There’s a reason the movie producers called this movie Bohemian Rhapsody and not “Queen” or “The Life and Times of Freddie Mercury.”  It’s because there has not been a song before or after Bohemian Rhapsody that shook up the musical world in such a way.  It broke the radio-impressed norm of songs being three minutes or they wouldn’t get any play time.  It bounced between ballads, guitar riffs, operatic choruses, high-pitched wails, and probably spans at least three musical genres.

It’s an incredible 6-minute rock opera that starts out slow and melodic, builds up slowly until BANG, the tempo races up and suddenly we’re off on a four-minute wild ride of screaming and rock and roll.  Then it drops us off as softly as the song began, leaving the listener exhausted, yet fully content with the wild journey they just embarked on.

A Guinness poll found that it’s the most popular British hit ever, and many people considered the music video groundbreaking and credit it with reinventing the medium.  It’s been in countless movies (think Wayne’s World) and elsewhere in the popular culture stream and damn near everyone, regardless of age, can sing the song in its entirety.  It did all of this and still NO ONE KNOWS WHAT IT’S EVEN ABOUT.  Everyone has their theories (including myself) but the band has an annoyingly steadfast stance that the song is musical poetry and the meaning is supposed to be interpreted by the listener, not dictated by the band.  So even if someone does correctly theorize on what the song means, we’ll never even get the satisfaction of knowing it.

And I know what you’re all thinking: “wow I’m totally convinced now, Queen really is the best band of all time, I can’t wait to share this with everyone I know on Facebook,” but believe it or not, there are a group of people who still disagree.  Their disagreement comes in the form of four British guys that hit the scene about a decade earlier.  Yes of course, how could I forget about the Beatles?  They brought rock and roll out of the basement and into the mainstream almost singlehandedly and proceeded to own the genre literally until the moment they split up.

I would never disrespect what Paul, John, Ringo, and George did, they were the best and still are musical gods, but they never pushed their music to the lengths that Freddie and his merry troop did.  The Beatles came up in a very vanilla era of music and as such, they were hamstrung and never had the opportunity to write like Queen did or experiment nearly as much.  That’s not their fault, it was just the way of the times.  The Beatles also don’t have the jams like Queen has.  The hit singles.

The songs that literally everyone knows for one reason or another.  Sure, they never had an album debut at anything other than #1 and people to this day, find inspiration from their music, but they just can’t compete with the sheer number of memorable singles that Queen has.  Even with all the songs I’ve mentioned in this article so far, I didn’t even get to mention Don’t Stop Me Now, Killer Queen, Under Pressure, Somebody to Love, Love of my Life, Radio Ga Ga, and so many more.

There has never been a band like Queen.  They hurdled every barrier you can think of and put out provocative and ground-breaking music every time they hit the stage.  They owned the charts and cemented their names in the history books and our collective memories.  They might be the most underrated band of all time, only because everyone forgets how much they really love them until they sit down and think about how much influence Queen has on the music world.  If the film Bohemian Rhapsody does anything, I hope it gives queen the recognition it deserves as the best band of all time.

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