Why Queen are "Magic"

 I quite like their early material, but not their later outputs, except for Innuendo.

 Unfortunately, they wasted their talent in the 80's

I love queen, they are one of my favourite bands.

BUT Their hamonies arent that great.
To call them the best harmonic rock group is terribly ignorant. They have big harmonies, some great harmonies( bohemian rhap. fat bottom girls, bycical race, some others..) but most of the harmonies are poorly written

And if you compare their harmonies to bands like The Beatles!! or Yes, CNSY, sh*t even System of a down's harmnoies are better written.

Queen is great band without doubt, the best band in classic rock ever IMO. And great proggy Queen II album. I like all albums, but the best track (together with suppers ready is IMO Innuendo - nice dark music + steve howe)

Flip: try to listen their older stuff, you are talking about commercial stuff only.

Flip_Stone wrote: I'm going to have to disagree strongly here.  Queen were okay, but certainly not "great" 1. The Vocals - That three people in the band can sing is no big deal.  In some bands, all 4 or 5 members sing.  Gentle Giant's advanced harmonizing is/was miles above Queen's. 2. The Guitar - Brian May is/was good, and his guitar orchestrations are interesting.  But still not necessarily something that unusual. 3. Songwriting - Again, just because all members in the band contributed, that doesn't automatically make the final result spectacular.  I'd say that they were below-par on songwriting, and was probably their biggest weakness. 4. Front "man" - One of the best?!?  What a joke!  Do you not remember, or did you not see the pictures of "him" prancing around the stage in makeup and short shorts and leotards and other gay clothing?  The guy was embarrassingly gay on stage, and very feminine.  And let's not forget that his lifestyle led to him dying of AIDS.  That's hardly something impressive or inspiring.  It was quite disgusting.   Their name sure did match (Freddie Mercury the Queen). 5. Diversity - Not that diverse, at least not compared to Talking Heads, Frank Zappa, XTC, Yes, Jethro Tull, and many other bands. No, I don't see much greatness or magic there.

No offence to you but how narrowminded can you get? Is dying of AIDS or enjoying life a disgrace? besides, the gay attitude was quite fashionable at the time. look at Bowie, Reed, Eno,...

I also totally disagree on the subject of diversity. XTC and (especially)Zappa  are (more) eclectic, but no way about the others you mentioned. Yes just played their amazing trademark progstyle but they only evolved when they went into eighties stuff! I give you ten Queen songs and if you know them you can decide for yourself how diverse Queens music actualy was !

1. the fairy fellers masterstroke (baroque pop) 2. sleeping on the sidewalk (blues) 3. sheer heart attack  (punky edged) 4. innuendo (art rock epic) 5. under pressure (classic pop)  6.  you don't fool me (funky nineties pop) 7.crazy little thing called love (rock 'n' roll)  8. Stone Cold Crazy ( metal)  9. these are the days of our lives (a veru very good ballad, hate that word!!) 10. bring back that leroy brown/Seaside rendezvous (vaudeville style, even jazzy at times, like the jazzsolo in lroy brown!!!)

even the singles are enough to hear the diversity! so don't deny it!

 

 

Queen had so much more to their music than the Beatles could ever manage.

John Gargo wrote: bluetailfly wrote: Syzygy wrote: Queen were one of the greatest singles bands since the Beatles (in fact, arguably THE greatest) and a superb live act, but I've never rated their albums that highly. Freddie Mercury was a brilliant front man, and the world is a slightly duller place without him in it. "Greatest singles band" ??? Queen? You mean like "Fat Bottomed Girls" and "Another One Bites the Dust"??? Those singles? You're comparing those to, say, "I Feel Fine," "And I Saw Her Standing There" and "Strawberry Fields Forever." ??? Perhaps a reconsideration is in order, as well as an apology to those of us with finely-calibrated musical sensibilities... You should apologize for being an elitist. And in my opinion, Queen are a far more interesting band than the Beatles, and yes I've heard enough full lengths from both to make such a claim.

Being an elitist? Because I think "Strawberry Fields Forever" is better than "Fat Bottomed Girls"? What I think you mean is that I should apologize for having taste in music, which I won't do.

You like Queen, fine, but, come on, get real, many bands have created more emotionally powerful, better crafted, more stylistically diverse, more inspired, more seriously intense music than Queen. The Beatles for one, Led Zeppelin for another, and I'm not even going to begin to compare them to the greats of prog.

Queen are sort of like Styx, great pop rock & fun concerts but not exactly a band that compells repeated listening.

bluetailfly wrote: Syzygy wrote: Queen were one of the greatest singles bands since the Beatles (in fact, arguably THE greatest) and a superb live act, but I've never rated their albums that highly. Freddie Mercury was a brilliant front man, and the world is a slightly duller place without him in it. "Greatest singles band" ??? Queen? You mean like "Fat Bottomed Girls" and "Another One Bites the Dust"??? Those singles? You're comparing those to, say, "I Feel Fine," "And I Saw Her Standing There" and "Strawberry Fields Forever." ??? Perhaps a reconsideration is in order, as well as an apology to those of us with finely-calibrated musical sensibilities...

You should apologize for being an elitist.

And in my opinion, Queen are a far more interesting band than the Beatles, and yes I've heard enough full lengths from both to make such a claim.

I always liked Uriah Heep very much. Favourite albums: Live 1973, Look at Yourself, ... but I think already at the time of Return to Fantasy they were becoming a band of whom the players carried sh*t for brains (exagerated, I know, but I like the sentence). But tunes like sweet lorraine, july morning, tears in my eyes, ... are amazing!!!

But, I saw a few concert fragments of them on DVD and it's just awfull, argh!! I just hate the image of the singer, he looks like an over-emotional piece of wood in a glamrock outfit. and that guitarplayer mick box, though he's quite good, he acts like a child imitating his favourite guitar hero! (on the same DVD he played guitar with one arm broken!). I've never seen the DVD since, I'm afraid it would make my love for the good Uriah Heep albums go away!

Some kind of magic..hmm

And there is surely bands that outbeats queen on all of the above criterias...

Edited by Lindsay Lohan

Syzygy wrote: Queen were one of the greatest singles bands since the Beatles (in fact, arguably THE greatest) and a superb live act, but I've never rated their albums that highly. Freddie Mercury was a brilliant front man, and the world is a slightly duller place without him in it.

"Greatest singles band" ??? Queen? You mean like "Fat Bottomed Girls" and "Another One Bites the Dust"??? Those singles?

You're comparing those to, say, "I Feel Fine," "And I Saw Her Standing There" and "Strawberry Fields Forever." ???

Perhaps a reconsideration is in order, as well as an apology to those of us with finely-calibrated musical sensibilities...

Edited by bluetailfly