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

by my lazy calculations, those in the States are probably settled in at work now, and those in the UK about to finish up for the day. perfect timing for all parties to throw together that last minute ballot!

I'm pretty excited about the forthcoming roll-out, actually... even if hardly any of my tracks place, I suspect I'll still be more than happy with what does, particularly if there's a few surprises there. It's also going to be interesting to compare people's ballots, as I'm sure that different locations are going to have different preferred Queen eras, and it's also going to be interesting to see how different Queen eras fare in the final results.

the spread of appreciation across different Queen eras is something i've really enjoyed noticing as the ballots have trickled in.

for those yet to vote: even at this late stage, it is within your power to influence the order of the highest-ranking songs through what you choose to include, but also what you don't choose to include.

Stand by for one more.

Any other Americans can agree or disagree, but our relationship with this band is so weird. One of the biggest artists of the classic rock era, and yet, so many of their biggest "hits" were nothing in this country.

Here's a tweet I made last year when I was in Sydney:

http://i.imgur.com/tVo8mAk.png

I think I was talking about "The Show Must Go On" or something.

Yeah, I kinda expect US ballots to be quite The Game/Hot Space-heavy for some reason. It's strange, because here in the UK, I feel very safe in saying that if you asked various random people to name several Queen songs off the top of their head, they really wouldn't have much trouble doing so or have to think too hard about it.

Yeah, Queen in America was basically over after The Game. Even "Under Pressure" wasn't huge here (wiki says #29) -- I know that growing up, there was ZERO Queen played on classic rock radio after "Another One Bites the Dust", and even that was rare compared to pretty much any of their hits from the 70s. I think US fans didn't take to the band leaving behind their bombastic rock roots for pop and dance stuff. Remember, this was the country where "disco sucks".

(fact is, the first time I'd ever heard of Under Pressure was in a Vanilla Ice song...)

First video of the MTV era was for "Under Pressure", which was just buildings falling down and stuff.

"Radio Gaga" was ok, but when they got dressed up in drag for "I Want to Break Free," I guess U.S. viewers said, ok that's enough.

Seriously, I probably saw the video for "Bohemian Rhapsody" on MTV more times than any of the 80s songs, and this was even before Wayne's World.

Album rock stations in Baltimore and DC definitely played Under Pressure when it was new.

wait when are ballots due? i thought it was like end-of-day Monday, but tell me how much time i have and i'll make sure i get mine in

well, it got to #29, so I'm sure someone was playing it. However, I was only 8 when it came out -- when I started listening to classic rock in the late 80s, they didn't play it at all (or any other Queen post 1980). It wasn't until Innuendo came out that it ever occurred to me what new Queen music might actually sound like, as the local classic rock radio stations were making a big point to say the band was returning to its roots.

in relation to Pleasant Plains' comment about hearing Queen in a Sydney Aldi store: yes, growing up in that same city - and i imagine it might have been the same across the UK - Queen were definitely one of those few bands that became a part of your everyday consciousness without you even realising it. this was due in large part to the sheer number of hits, all of which served the purpose of making the repetitions of your day - the long car trips, the excursions to the supermarket - a little bit larger than life.

heading to bed shortly & happy to keep accepting ballots till i wake up (i'm on holidays, so that'll be a nice leisurely hour) or till Monday officially ends your time. honestly, no rush. my priority is to get as many more in as possible.

I can understand US audiences being a bit confused by the 'I Want To Break Free' video - it was a bit of a pisstake of the long-running UK soap Coronation Street, which I wouldn't expect Americans to be familiar with.

i imagine it might have been the same across the UK - Queen were definitely one of those few bands that became a part of your everyday consciousness without you even realising it

Yup, this is definitely OTM.

did Wayne's World bring about a bit of a Queen revival in the States?

for that one song, at least. what year did the Greatest Hits albums come out? sadly that's what most of the US casual fans know them from (not that it's not a great collection, jsut there's so much more they're missing out on)

i guess the release of Wayne's World also coincided with Freddie's death, which would have made the renewed interest more poignant.

Greatest Hits I was released in the early 80s, but it did get a huge amount of exposure in the early 90s, possibly simply because it was bundled alongside Greatest Hits II.

yeah i came of age in the early '90s so i don't have much of a concept of Queen's profile in the US before that but i remember it all as one big wave of publicity -- Freddie dying, Wayne's World, the giant tribute concert airing over and over on MTV. the 1981 Greatest Hits album (which was a huge staple in my house) was the only compilation in U.S. stores at the time, then they rush released a 'Classic Queen' comp in '92, both sold millions in the '90s.

interestingly none of this really seemed to lift the visibility of their later music. all the albums after The Game went gold in the U.S. but never platinum. i didn't even know Made In Heaven existed until fairly recently, i had no clue a posthumous album with Freddie vocals came out after Innuendo and sold millions around the world, and i was a pop music obsessive by '95.

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.