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Was Queen Always Considered "Rock" and "Cool" To Listen To?

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Was Queen Always Considered "Rock" and "Cool" To Listen To?

Old 02-03-16, 09:07 AM
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Re: Was Queen Always Considered "Rock" and "Cool" To Listen To?

Originally Posted by Supermallet
Or, more reasonably, a band can have more than one dimension to them and still be hard rock. Your delineations that Queen and Kiss aren't hard rock but other bands are despite doing songs that clearly aren't hard rock is both arbitrary and silly.
(More generally).

Over the years I've noticed this type of hand wringing with precise/arbitrary categorizations of musical styles, seems to be very popular among individuals who are really hardcore into less popular forms of punk rock and metal.

It's hilarious watching metal guys debate face-to-face in person offline, over what is the difference between thrash metal vs power metal, etc .... or death metal vs black metal, etc .....
Old 02-03-16, 10:16 AM
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Re: Was Queen Always Considered "Rock" and "Cool" To Listen To?

Look is Queen a hard rock band? NO QUESTION. To refute that is gleeful ignorance or just trying to be nudgenik.

But is Queen also more than a hard rock band? Certainly. They dabbled in pop, dance, prog, proto-metal, folk, dance hall, funk, new wave, Broadway-styled showtunes, etc. Queen was probably one of THE most stylistically versatile bands to ever come down the pike.
Old 02-03-16, 12:45 PM
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Re: Was Queen Always Considered "Rock" and "Cool" To Listen To?

I loved "Killer Queen" and bought the single back in 1974 (I was 7). I wasn't even aware of the band I just heard it on the radio and wanted to own it. The next time I was interested was when I heard "We Will Rock You/We Are The Champions." A friend of mine down the street was a fan and owned the News Of The World record so I would hang out over there and listen to it non-stop. He tried playing other albums like Queen II but I didn't like it very much (it has since become one of my favorites of theirs). Jazz I missed somehow.

In 1979, I remember when Queen released the advanced single, "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" to radio and I loved it. I bought The Game as soon as it came out and played it to death. Loved every song. Still do. I also bought the Greatest Hits record that came out in 1981 with the new track. "Under Pressure."

The next song that was on the air was "Body Language." I absolutely hated this song. It also didn't help that the video was banned from MTV. After that was the song/video for 'Radio Ga Ga." I didn't hate it but didn't love it either. Next, was their appearance at Live Aid in 1985. Brilliant performance. In 1986, we heard One Vision which was back to form.

In 1989, "I Want It All" was released from The Miracle. I bought this CD immediately and had it in non-stop rotation in my car. Loved 99% of it. Next was Headlong from Innuendo (1991). Another great track. Also bought the CD and played it to death. The title track being perhaps the best thing they've ever recorded.

When Freddie died I was devastated. In 1992, I watched the tribute concert on MTV with delight and shed many tears. I wasn't real thrilled with the Made In Heaven release from 1995 but the final tribute single, "No-One But You (Only The Good Die Young)" was fantastic as the last Queen song and very emotional.

Starting in the early 1990's I began to finally listen to all of their albums in their entirety. The band is so good at crafting records. How the songs flow into one another is wonderful. I was more surprised once I started listening to the albums from the 1980's because of the mostly bad singles that were released to promote them.

Like every other band, Queen tried to incorporate their sound with what was going on trend-wise. Hot Space was a very dance-oriented record yet still has some great songs like "Staying Power," "Back Chat," "Action This Day," "Put Out The Fire," "Life Is Real," "Las Palabras de Amor" and "Under Pressure."

The Works was a more traditional rock record with nearly every track being a standout even the B-Side, "I Go Crazy" is phenomenal.

A Kind Of Magic was mostly a soundtrack to Highlander with greats as "One Vision," "Friends Will Be Friends," "Who Wants To Live Forever," "Gimme The Prize" and "Princes Of The Universe."

The Miracle starts off with two great tracks that run together, "Party/Khashoggi's Ship." The only two weak songs for me are "Rain Must Fall" and "My Baby Does Me," yet there's still wonderful music there.

Innuendo has the very strong opening title track and closing number, "The Show Must Go On." Otherwise the album is a bit uneven but I still listen to it often.

I don't think bands should be categorized. Rock is pretty vague. Michael Jackson's "Beat It" has a great guitar solo by Eddie Van Halen.

I never really thought about whether Queen was cool or not. My friends and I liked them. That was good enough for me.
Old 02-03-16, 03:04 PM
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Re: Was Queen Always Considered "Rock" and "Cool" To Listen To?

Originally Posted by Spiderbite
I was made fun of consistently throughout junior high and high school because I unabashedly named Queen my favorite band. I was called a "queer" and all that stuff because of Freddy Mercury (of which I had NO idea he was a homosexual...how did I miss that? Even if was, I didn't care because I loved the music so much). This was 1980 to 1991.
No wonder your parents hated Queen - they blamed them for you being in junior high and high school for 11 years!!
Old 02-03-16, 03:14 PM
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Re: Was Queen Always Considered "Rock" and "Cool" To Listen To?

Originally Posted by Mikael79
No wonder your parents hated Queen - they blamed them for you being in junior high and high school for 11 years!!

Haha. Yeah. I guess that does look funny the way I typed it.

Nobody made fun of me in elementary school because nobody really knew who Queen was. Everyone was into Motley Crue, Twisted Sister, Quiet Riot, Van Halen, etc. Man, all those buttons on blue jean jackets!
Old 02-03-16, 03:26 PM
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Re: Was Queen Always Considered "Rock" and "Cool" To Listen To?

Originally Posted by TerryW
In 1989, "I Want It All" was released from The Miracle. I bought this CD immediately and had it in non-stop rotation in my car. Loved 99% of it. Next was Headlong from Innuendo (1991). Another great track. Also bought the CD and played it to death. The title track being perhaps the best thing they've ever recorded.
Glad to see at least one other person appreciate that era.
Old 02-03-16, 03:31 PM
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Re: Was Queen Always Considered "Rock" and "Cool" To Listen To?

Originally Posted by TerryW
A Kind Of Magic was mostly a soundtrack to Highlander with greats as "One Vision," "Friends Will Be Friends," "Who Wants To Live Forever," "Gimme The Prize" and "Princes Of The Universe."

Last edited by Hokeyboy; 02-03-16 at 04:57 PM.
Old 02-03-16, 04:04 PM
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Re: Was Queen Always Considered "Rock" and "Cool" To Listen To?

Originally Posted by hdnmickey
Glad to see at least one other person appreciate that era.
Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed The Miracle and Innuendo but those two albums have some truly bad songs. I still like them because I was a Queen fanatic at the time, but I had to convince myself that the albums were better than they actually were to keep up my fandom.

Some of the the songs either sounded like they were trying to hard to gain...well...I don't know what. And then other songs' lyrics were just plain out horrible. Both of the albums were a letdown for me after It's a Kind Of Magic which I always thought was strong.
Old 02-03-16, 07:36 PM
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Re: Was Queen Always Considered "Rock" and "Cool" To Listen To?

Innuendo is one of their better latter day albums. The Miracle has some great songs and some serious crap. A Kind of Magic is pretty consistent, but with an absolutely awful album cover. The Works is so bad, don't even get me started. Queen's worst record by far.
Old 02-04-16, 04:35 AM
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Re: Was Queen Always Considered "Rock" and "Cool" To Listen To?

I bought News of the World when it first came out and played it repeatedly, so yeah, back then Queen was considered super cool. Then they went commercial big time with "Bicycle" and "Fat Bottomed Girls" which got tons of airplay, but were still considered pretty hip at the time.

Then the punk and new wave movements hit and they bit the dust in terms of popularity among me and my friends. They were now basically relics of the past, churning out popular MTV videos, but part of the boring, mainstream music scene and no longer even remotely interesting to our hipster circle.

Never cared for "Under Pressure" when it first came out (probably overhyped at the time), but have come to really appreciate it in recent years.

Originally Posted by Paff
And the poster who said that music fans of the time didn't know Freddie Mercury was gay, yes on that too. Back then, people couldn't imagine that anyone into rock could possibly be gay. Seems ludicrous now, but it was true. Even in the 90s, I was having an argument with a co-worker.
Eh, Tom Robinson was openly gay (at the time, at least) and rocked as hard as The Clash in the late 70s/early 80s. Of course, most Queen fans in the U.S. probably never even heard of TR, so yeah it's quite possible that they remained in the dark about Freddie's sexual preferences.

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