Was Queen a sellout?

Queen seemed to evolve they way they would have anyway. Pop-rock bands like hit singles, so after Killer Queen, that's what they naturally chased. It's not much more complex than that.

richardh wrote: Indeed Queen were never a 'prog band' and so could not technically sell out anyway. They had a remarkable career and achieved a great deal within the confines of rock and pop music. I respect them for what they were.

I hate the term "selling out". It implies elitism. Like the band belongs only to a select group of people, and no-one else. And if more people grow to appreciate the band's music, the first group of fans become horribly defensive, like they're "bigger fans" of them than the new ones. "Oh, *I* liked them waaaaay before you".

People like that seriously need to lighten up. Music belongs to all of us.

Glam rock band.
Most bands of the early 70s were prog related in some way. Queen were about 10% prog and the rest glam plop rock

Trying to 'keep in touch' with then-modern music tendencies is always a kind of a sellout in some sense, so Queen were a sellout in 1977 when they left their prog influences and started to include punk and new wave sounds in their style.

But I don't care much about that since their stylistic updgrade (or downgrade) was quire successful, and although it's quite evident that none of their 80's albums were as good as Queen II or Sheer Heart Attack, even on their lowermost points like The Game they kept on as good songwriters who still could put nice catchy tunes. So they were looking much better in comparison with many 70's heavy rockers like Uriah Heep or Rainbow/Deep Purple, whose '80s' albums were not just poppy, but also quite boring and uninspired. Even Black Sabbath and Bowie, who entered the 80s with simply outstanding LPs couldn't maintain the same quality throughout the whole decade. So if Queen still could come up with songs like 'Princes of the Universe', 'Who Wants to Live Forever'. 'Hammer to Fall' or 'Save Me', does it matter whether it was a sellout or not?

Btw it still was great that in late 80's-early 90's they started to return to their prog roots with anthems like 'Was It All Worth It' and 'Innuendo', it's a shame this period couldn't last longer for them


Edited by ole-the-first - August 31 2014 at 01:49

Queen used to be a good Prog band back when they weren't a money-seeking band, too bad their sound in the 80s isn't quite as good as it was back on the very first period of their career

Aussie-Byrd-Brother wrote: ... I remember some quote from Freddie who described their music as `disposable', in that, it comes on the radio, you listen to it, enjoy it, then discard it and move on after it's finished. I can definitely see that in regards to the direction they eventually moved in, but writing pretty much perfect pop/rock music with cool playing and incredible vocals/melodies is nothing to look down on! Still those early albums are the jewels though!

 

Catcher10 wrote: No clue...call Brian May and ask him Seriously, the same could be said for Genesis, Yes (90125, Big Generator). I have no problem with bands doing this, commercial success = money!! And they deserve to make a lot of money, especially back in those days only album sales and touring paid the bills.

Possibly it also influenced that Freddy got seduced by the role of superstar frontman live and was not interested in playing the piano live anymore, and they never wanted to take a full-time keyboardist, so their format live was limited to a trio guitar / bass / drums (although they had support by a keyboardist and pre-recorded stuff occasionally), so they could not make very complex music which they could not play live.