Stone POLLd Crazy: The ILM Queen Poll Voting Thread (#68? in a series)

just listened to The Works in its entirety. solid all the way through, but idk, possibly undermined a little bit by its evenness? half the songs seem all too intent on earnestly appropriating their status as Big Stadium Rock Anthems from the very first note, as if the blockish guitar riffs & over-percolated vocals you hear upfront are enough to carry you along for the ride. the presumption kinda kills it for me.

maybe i just find it a little too conventional, the mighty Hammer to Fall notwithstanding. any ardent supporters of this album out there? would love to know your thoughts.

Yes, me! It's my favourite '80s Queen album. Why? Because there isn't a track that I ever feel like skipping on it, whereas there's definitely tracks that I would skip on other '80s Queen albums. Yeah, there's a lot of tracks on The Works that are going over old Queen styles, like 'It's A Hard Life', 'Hammer To Fall', 'Tear It Up', the "old time" style of 'Man On The Prowl' (they seem to have one of these on a lot of their albums), but tracks like those are also blended in with stuff that takes in just the right amount of New Wave influence without alienating Queen audiences: 'Radio Ga Ga', 'I Want To Break Free', even 'Machines' (which is lyrically corny as fuck, but I still wouldn't skip over it) ... 'Keep Passing The Open Windows' is an underrated track I think, and neat use of the middle 8 as the intro, which ends up becoming the most memorable part of the song.

It's great to see that the debut Queen album has been mentioned already, though, and it goes without saying that there is one track in particular that will be on my ballot without a shadow of a doubt: it begins with the letter 'L'.

you know, it's interesting you mention that The Works references old Queen styles since I was genuinely wondering earlier today if It's A Hard Life was a conscious reworking of Play The Game (with perhaps something of a less optimistic standpoint). hard not to spot the overt similarities between those songs.

yeah, Queen I will almost definitely be represented somewhere on my ballot.

Yeah... I think it's very difficult to say whether Mercury sat down at a piano and said "today, I'm going to write a song that mixes 'Play The Game' with the first half of 'Bohemian Rhapsody'", or whether the song just fell out of him like that... I mean, if you analyse it I guess you can hear elements of one or two Queen tracks in there, but at the same time it feels very naturally written. I love the track, for what it's worth, I think it's a great song, and I prefer it to 'Play The Game' for sure. Dare I say it, I prefer it to the overplayed 'Bohemian Rhapsody' too, which won't be on my ballot!

I am hugely tempted to vote for 'Jesus'

really intrigued to know which of the deeper cuts will go top 10/top 20. Liar? Love Of My Life? i'm not hugely familiar with the entire non-hits back catalogue just bits of it.

oh and if anyone hasn't seen the 2 hour 2-part BBC doc from a few years back, it's amazing and it's here in full.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mMbrHXjXlo

it can be hard to situate the merits of Bohemian Rhapsody when you know you've heard it 1000 times too many. but it was obviously a turning point in their writing, and yes i can hear bits of it in It's A Hard Life (along with Play The Game, of course).

Jesus has really been jumping out at me this last set of listens. it definitely encapsulates the spirit of that first album.

it is quite interesting to think about the deeper cuts that may/ may not appear. Queen II and Sheer Heart Attack could yield a few of them, i dare say.

thanks for posting that doco! i'd set to watching it now if i didn't have to be up in 5 hours.

My favourite part of 'Jesus' is the middle part, and yeah, that documentary is great and from what I remember, they touch upon the tensions that were in the band circa Hot Space a little bit as well.

As for deep cuts, I'm incredibly fond of this one, buried at the end of The Miracle...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNvzJ_dBHfQ

Also, there's a few selections from Jazz that I love that may or may not make it onto my ballot, always loved this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFtsWGaeAu0

I'll laugh my tits off if 'Mustapha' manages to place, although it'd be a pleasant surprise if it did.

really like Was It All Worth It. one of those nostalgic, almost ominously melancholy Queen tunes, the tone of which was increasingly prevalent on the final couple of albums.

couldn't help but get stuck into the documentary despite the late hour. interesting how much of an impact that initial Top of the Pops appearance had. the momentum started to gather much earlier than i thought.

... and yet they had no money for a long time.

Well, the band definitely knew during the making of The Miracle that Freddie was ill, and I don't think anyone involved knew just how long Freddie was going to be able to keep going for, so The Miracle could have easily have been the last Queen album. I've heard rumours that they titled the album The Miracle because it was a miracle that the album got made and completed, although I'm not sure how true that is - I have a feeling that the album was just titled after the song of the same name and nothing more than that. However, if you think of The Miracle being the "final" Queen album then 'Was It All Worth It' makes sense, not just as an album closer but a career closer too. That the band managed to carry on and make Innuendo was the real miracle, IMO... and that album ends with 'The Show Must Go On', which is equally as perfect as an album closer/career closer, IMO.

I've spent a lot of the day relistening to Queen tracks for this poll, and I cannot get over how sloppy a drummer Roger Taylor is. On any pre-NotW track where Freddie is not playing rhythmic piano, he'll just randomly come in super late with a snare hit or five on the 2 or 4, completely trashing the groove. I never liked the synthisized Queen tunes, but it's hard not to notice that John Deacon's bass playing just opens up when the band started playing to click tracks and drum machines.

my ballot's very Queen II heavy

there is definitely a heightened sense of sentimentality -- of mortality even -- about those last two (or three) albums that can make them sad to listen to.

interesting about Roger Taylor being a sloppy drummer. always sensed that he was never doing anything too flamboyant, that he didn't need to stretch himself too much given the innovations of Freddie and Brian, but it's still curious to hear that the tautness and discipline of the other members didn't strictly rub off on him.

i suspect my ballot will end up with several Queen II tracks as well.

x-post

I always liked the way Taylor mixed his snare hits with the opening of the hi-hat.. it sounds great on 'Brighton Rock' in particular.

I love Queen II, but it's likely that I'll only end up voting for maybe one or two tracks from it... I'm trying to represent my favourite Queen tracks throughout all the albums, and even though I think Side Two of Queen II is wonderful, I think it works better as one continuous piece of music rather than broken down into individual tracks for the most part.

Roger Taylor : the most underrated hard rock singer of the 1970s?

he definitely provides an interesting, spartan counterpoint to Freddie. he also sings lead on some excellent songs.

The sound of Taylor's drums is very 70s and cool, but Brighton Rock is also a good example of what I'm talking about -- May sets up one tempo and feel, and by the end of the verse, Taylor has slowed the whole thing down and it doesn't recover until he lays out after his fills. In the first guitar break, it sounds almost as if he decides to pick up his sticks at the moment they should be striking the snare.

woah, Dead On Time from Jazz is proving to be a gainful new discovery for me. Brian's main riff on that one is fierce!

also worth noting that i must have been sleeping on Spread Your Wings this whole time. what a song!

'Dead On Time' rules]! I've always felt that Jazz was one of the most underrated Queen albums of the '70s, and there's so many songs on there that I could vote for, 'Dead On Time' definitely being one of them. Love the thunderclap at the end and Freddie shouting "YOU'RE DEAD!"

'Spread Your Wings' easily one of my highlights of News Of The World, an album which I know that a lot of people like but is on the lower-half of the table for me.

In fact, I was just thinking... it'll be great to see which writer gets has the most songs place on the poll, I suspect either May or Mercury since they wrote the bulk of the Queen material, but I reckon there'll be a huge number of Deacon songs too.

i'm really coming round to News Of The World, i think. Fight From The Inside is another minor classic - an infectious Taylor rocker with an unremitting pulse. i also have a bit of a soft spot for All Dead, All Dead, which frankly a very weird song.

we're a few ballots deep already. keep them coming!

"Mustapha" is a song I've always loved from a so-so album.

Whoever votes for "We Will Rock You" will get reported to the FCC.

"we will rock you" is awesome as fuck and perfect as hell. i was thinking that it's a little odd to have it split from "we are the champions" but whatever.

yeah but I hate sports

Also "We Are the Champions" sounds like a nerd's lament, not a triumphalist anthem

shit's so triumphalist it's practically wagner

man when may's solo cuts in in 'we will rock you', fucking lightning bolt from the gods, maybe the most efficient solo ever in terms of effort vs force

WHOMP-WHOMP-BAP
WHOMP-WHOMP-BAP

seriously add a mosquito hum, a calliope, and some trenchant social commentary and you've got 'let's go all the way'

you mean "an Elvis Costello Spike tune"

ONE LUMP OR TWOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

https://i.vimeocdn.com/video/447768206_640.jpg

i do understand the argument that Rock You and Champions could be seen as the one entity, but i think it's radio sequencing as much as anything that feeds the idea that they're codependent. they are very different songs when taken apart, each with a rounded beginning, middle and end.

i do personally like Rock You, particularly its spareness and restraint. you know they could've laid it on thicker had they chosen. even though it's been tirelessly overplayed, i always enjoy hearing it because it's so taut and brief.

It's telling that 'We Will Rock You' and 'We Are The Champions' were sequenced back-to-back not just on the News Of The World album, but on the Greatest Hits album too. I can understand why folks have a hard time separating the two from each other.

I won't be voting for 'We Will Rock You', though.

i have never heard a rock station play just "Rock You" or just "Champions," it's always one and then the other. it's a great one-two punch, really.

xpost I didn't vote for it either, not because it isn't a great song, but because I based the ballot on what 20 Queen songs at this given juncture that I'd actually want to hear the most at this given time, and those have run their course with me. Had it been a 30 song ballot, though, they might have made it.

"Keep Yourself Alive" was one of my tops, as while I"m not a fan of the debut that much, it's such an energetic burst onto the scene to begin that album.

also threw in a vote for "Fairyfeller's Master Stroke" because the song is such silly, goofy fun. "Prophet's Song" is my current fav - that a capella "now I know" section always drives me gaga, I love it.

Night at the Opera is one of those albums which, despite it being my 2nd fav Queen album, it is moreso for the work as a whole than individual tracks, though there's no denying it has those too ("Death on Two Legs" is so great).

also love me some "Teo Torriatte" - such a beautiful ballad. still have strong memories of that as it's associated with the summer before I went to college for the first time, which is when I first heard DAy at the Races (kind of an undercooked album).

i actually enforced them being counted as one song on the classic rock poll (along with some other songs paired by airplay with "Heartbreaker/Living Loving Maid" and "Brain Damage/Eclipse"), but none of that stuff got enough votes to place. xp

waht

i'm not sure i'll vote for either but "you've brought me fame and fortune and everythingthat goes withit --- i thank you all" would be pretty high on my fave queen moments. doing "another one bites the dust" at karaoke and realizing he's barking out "mighty dusty!" would be on there also.

agree, it all seemed to happen at once. And one other important thing -- Hollywood Records reissued all their 70s records a few weeks before Wayne's World came out. So, I within a very short time, I went from trying to get my friends to check out these records and (to me) obscure tracks like Bicycle Race and Don't Stop Me Now, to all of them singing the same praises, seemingly out of the blue.

yeah, and it was also ridiculously easy to devour each and every song from Greatest Hits, to the extent that even if you had no idea of the band's timeline or the history preceding your knowledge of the tracks, they still managed to take on an immediate sense of gravity & distinction in terms of your appreciation of them.

i knew about Made in Heaven at the time, but i routinely forget it exists. i think i meant to give it another shot for this poll, but never got round to it.

the title track of Made In Heaven is pretty cool imo

btw i made a playlist of my favorite Queen deep cuts last year, some songs very worth considering here:
http://narrowcast.blogspot.com/2014/03/deep-album-cuts-vol-14-queen.html

May says that even Freddie's death had nothing like the impact of Wayne's World. also the studio wanted Guns N Roses in the scene.

oh how long is it until ballot deadline day please??

My cassette copy of their greatest hits looked like this:

http://i.imgur.com/HweUd5A.jpg

Have no idea where I got that.

one of my very earliest pop culture memories, very earliest memories period was being a very very young child and staring at the cover of news of the world. at the time it was positively terrifying and mystifying to me, i remember i'd stare at the cover of physical graffiti also but that was more like playing w/ a pop up book, news of the world was something different altogether. 'another one bites the dust' was one of the first pop hits i was obsessed w/, it's kind of silly macho aspect was easy for a young boy to grip on to and then 'another one rides the bus' came out and i loved that as well. 'flash's theme' i loved as well, for some reason my mother wouldn't let me watch the movie (i can only assume because it was a deserved flop, she let me watch the jerk and halloween so it wasn't shielding my eyes from whatever), so that was the proxy i got and it served its purpose, probably outdid it. and then queen effectively disappeared for me. what at the time felt like forever later but in retrospect was only five years later 'a kind of magic' was a minor hit but i latched onto it, like running into an old friend. at this point also the local top 40 station played a countdown of the british charts show at the end of sunday nights i'd listen to as i went to sleep so i knew that queen were massive in england (though not as massive at the time as pet shop boys). a few years after that 'i want it all' came out and again our local top 40 station played it quite alot, far more than its chart showing. i also had acquaintances that always listened to queen when they cruised around cuz they were highlander dorks. so right before the tribute concert and wayne's world reestablished their legend in the us they'd still managed to maintain some position on the periphery, they hadn't completely disappeared like molly hatchet or something. what's interesting to me is how well that tribute did in reestablishing their legend. i hear nearly as wide a variety of their hits on classic rock and oldies radio as i do for zeppelin or ac/dc and tracks like 'i want to break free' and 'radio ga ga' that really did nothing in the us the first time around have been made revisionist hits similar to what has happened w/ 'don't stop believing' in the uk though not to the same magnitude.

sent in my ballot! 10 Freddie songwriting credits, 8 Brian, 5 John, 2 Roger.

http://i.imgur.com/iYYPy56.png

i remember when I was younger my preference was the bombast, genre-tourist Queen, but the older me gravitates towards the Queen rockers now.

excited for this rollout.

they were such a great hard rock band. i don't necessarily think isolating the different strains of their catalog would do it more justice than reveling in the variety, but a playlist of their hardest rockers would definitely be a load of fun.

i knew they rocked harder when they started out but i didn't realize how much, i think i first became aware of it reading hetfield talking about elektra approaching metallica to cover queen for rubaiyat and them thinking 'queen???' and then listening to the early stuff and thinking 'holy shit'.

yeah a few notes into "Brighton Rock" and it's like ....damn!

I always loved that even when May was playing heavy riffs, his guitar playing always had a melodic sensibility. not talking about his leads so much, as those are obviously iconic, but even those hard rock riffs he played were just earwormy on their own.

haha big fan of that Hetfield story.

if anyone else wants to throw in a ballot right at the final hurdle, now's your chance. anyone else still putting one together? pisces, Alfred?

thread inspired me to put on Sheer Heart Attack right now - the remaster!

ahh man I forgot how good Tenement Funster was!

Christ I'm gonna have regrets about not including more songs from this album on my ballot, tho to be fair I did include two.

this remaster is really clear too...

Sheer Heart Attack rocks very hard indeed. it's also a whole lot of fun - Queen had this wonderful, unique thing of never taking themselves 100% seriously, so that the joy you can extract from the songs is almost uninhibited if you want it to be.

I still giggle whenever I hear that slide whistle on "Fairy-Feller's Master Stroke" from Queen II.

word.

this poll is going to be a Top 39 by the way (in tribute, of course, to the song of the same name).

they were such a great hard rock band. i don't necessarily think isolating the different strains of their catalog would do it more justice than reveling in the variety, but a playlist of their hardest rockers would definitely be a load of fun.

― some dude, Tuesday, September 22, 2015 2:06 AM (13 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There's already a compilation out there which leans towards their more hard rock tracks, the imaginatively-titled Queen Rocks!

Sheer Heart Attack is a brilliant album, IMO... A Night At The Opera is considered the "classic", but I personally would rank Sheer Heart Attack above it. In a way, I wish you could vote for 'Tenement Funster'/'Flick Of The Wrist'/'Lily Of The Valley' as one song, because on the album those three songs flow together a form a kind of suite, although if we were to go down that route, then it would make voting for parts of Queen II, particularly the second side, such a ballache.

I wanna talk more about this when the results thread comes up and I can point to specific examples, but for me so many of their best early rockers are let down by sloppy, probably unplanned tempo changes. There are a couple of songs where Roger just comes in at a completely different tempo than Brian and/or John, and it takes a couple of bars for everyone to follow in line behind Roger's new (slower and thumping) tempo. This isn't a problem in the piano-led songs, rocking or not. But I'll make my case as the songs come up, and it doesn't stop me from replaying the stuff in my head with all problems edited out and loving it.

Didn't vote but looking forward to the results rollout immensely.

It's worth noting that there are a few songs on Sheer Heart Attack that Queen initially worked on without Brian May, because he was in hospital - I'm not sure which songs, but I'm assuming that 'Misfire' was one of them.

I wonder if his own Dear Friends was one

should be able to get this thing underway in a few hours...

]I wonder if his own Dear Friends was one

― Dominique, Wednesday, September 23, 2015 12:20 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Nah, Brian was definitely involved in the recording of that one from the beginning - he plays piano on it, and aside from the vocals there's very little else!

Let's defend Freddie against the movie's bullshit.

While I'm at it, let me destroy this crap.

I can't find fault with any of your Freddie picks, aside from that 'My Melancholy Blues' does very little for me. 'We Are the Champions' and 'We Will Rock You' are both fucking classic, though!