Best Songwriter in Queen

someone_else wrote: I like the songs of Brian May and Roger Taylor, but I cannot vote for anyone but Freddie Mercury: he wrote Bohemian Rhapsody and Innuendo.

Actually, while Freddie played a large role in the song, Innuendo wasn't quite his song, the way Bohemian Rhapsody was.  The music was based on a jam between the other three members which Freddie molded into a song and the lyrics were mostly Roger's. 

@llama - I agree with you on Deacon.  Most of his stuff seemed rather generic.  Roger did write a lot of songs I loved though - Drowse, Sheer Heart Attack, Human Body, A Kind of Magic, the lyrics to One Vision and Innuendo, Breakthrough, Invisible Man, and so on.  I will admit though that Rock It was not his best work.  Why it made it to the album and Human Body (a much better song) was relegated to a b-side I'll never know.

Freddie

The Doctor wrote: I've always enjoyed May's writing the most.  Mercury has also written some great stuff too, but he had some real clunkers in there, like Delilah or Body Language.    I also enjoyed Taylor's writing quite a bit as well.  Aside from a few songs, was never a huge fan of Deacon's songwriting (Spread Your Wings notwithstanding).

Deacon's songwriting (with a couple of exceptions) always struck me as rather trite and obvious. The songs aren't bad, but I always felt like I had heard them done before. I'm not the hugest fan of Taylor either (Rock It(Prime Jive) is so bad that it wraps around to be good again) but at least he was original.

I don't like Queen, but I love Brian May, so it's easy for me.

^Everything you said.

I'm amazed that everyone in that band could write a good song, play an instrument well, and 3/4 had very good singing voices.

Ogre Battle, March of the Black Queen and Bohemian Rhapsody are all in my top 10 songs of all time, so Freddy for me.

All good sonwriters, but I'll go with Freddie

May, just ahead of Mercury with Deacon third.

I was a huge fan back in high school, and it was always Roger's songs that I looked forward to the most.  He was kind of my hero for a while.  I think I remember making a mixed tape of just Roger Taylor songs.  He only had 1 or 2 songs per album, but I always loved them.

Freddie and Brian were probably "best" - more prolific, certainly, and more central to the Queen sound -- but I'm giving my vote to Rog.


Edited by HolyMoly - August 13 2012 at 12:30