Top 50 Queen Countdown: 30–21

30. ‘Ogre Battle’
Written by Freddie Mercury
From the album: Queen II, 1974

This and the next two songs should be considered in tandem, as a joint collection of songs, instead of as three separate entities who just happen to fall next to each other on Queen II. As on ‘Father To Son’, Queen indulged themselves in grandiose production ideas that would have been poo-pooed on their debut album, and while some of the ideas are too indulgent, well, what else could be expected of Queen? Opening Side Two (or Side Black) with a whirlwind of backwards guitar and drums, ‘Ogre Battle’ is another excursion into mystical myths, this time of beasts duking it out for no particular reason. But while May was often tasked with writing on the guitar, it comes as a surprise that this raucous rocker – devoid of any piano – was penned by Mercury. And with a crash of the gong…

29. ‘The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke’
Written by Freddie Mercury
From the album: Queen II, 1974

…we are introduced to this curious ditty, an aural adaptation of the similarly-titled Richard Tate painting. Neatly encompassing Mercury’s cheeky sense of humor and keen ear for studio production, the song is 2 1/2 minutes of unbridled fun, with the vocalist throwing in scores of unconventional, antiquated words (“pedagogue”, “tatterdemalion”, “quaere”, “harridan”, “mab”, “ostler”), the likes of which wouldn’t even grace a Yes recording, over top a quirky, piano-led backing, punctuated with harpsichord trills and guitar orchestrations. The effective use of stereo panning was an early indicator of the kind of precision and attention to detail Queen would perfect on their next three albums. But, before long, the hyperdriven song quiets down and gives way to…

28. ‘Nevermore’
Written by Freddie Mercury
From the album: Queen II, 1974

…this utterly sublime piano ballad, once again penned by Mercury but devoid of the mythos of its predecessors. As with ‘Lily Of The Valley’, which would turn up on the next album, Mercury, the eternal romantic, is uncertain of sexual paths he’s heading down, and while his gender-bending would be seen as typical early 1970s androgyny, it ultimately revealed something deeper and more true to himself. ‘Nevermore’ is Mercury’s earliest indicator that something wasn’t right with his feelings, though it’s disguised as a pained broken love song; with subtle touches of instruments (a splash of drums here, some supporting bass there), the song lasts a mere 77 seconds, but it’s 77 seconds of the most honest songwriting the still blossoming Mercury had indulged himself in to date.

27. ‘My Fairy King’
Written by Freddie Mercury
From the album: Queen, 1973

The earliest piano-dominated songs that Mercury would write, ‘My Fairy King’ is one of his most impenetrable songs ever, with layers upon layers of subtext and hidden meanings that to decipher it all would make one go cross-eyed. Its inspiration came from Robert Browning’s poem “The Pied Piper” (even directly quoting the lines “And their dogs outran our fallow deer / And honey-bees had lost their stings / And horses were born with eagles’ wings”), though there are hints of an autobiography at work with the “Mother Mercury” line. It’s well-documented that Mercury legally changed his name from Bulsara while writing this song, though it was only one stage of his metamorphosis that was complete.

26. ‘Long Away’
Written by Brian May
From the album: A Day At The Races, 1976

Brian May was always the most ill-at-ease with being a rock star, preferring the privacy and solitude he and his family should respectfully receive. Yet the calling to be a guitar hero was too great, and he sacrificed a different calling in order to be one – but that doesn’t mean he got over it. Starting with 1975′s ‘Good Company’ (which bubbles just under my Top 50) until 1978′s ‘Leaving Home Ain’t Easy’, May would write one self-sung, reflective, and introspective song per album that addressed his awkwardness with balancing a normal family lifestyle with rock stardom, and ‘Long Away’ is the most affecting and gorgeous. Set to a bed of ringing, jangling 12-string guitars (oddly, eschewing his homemade Red Special until the solo), this McCartney-esque rock ballad is a sweet dose of reality among the loftier grandiloquence of A Day At The Races.

25. ‘Drowse’
Written by Roger Taylor
From the album: A Day At The Races, 1976

Just as May had written the metaphorically autobiographical ‘Long Away’ for A Day At The Races, Roger Taylor, too, felt particularly introspective, and updated his earlier slacker anthem, ‘Tenement Funster’, for this album. This song has come under fire by a lot of fans as being the weakest moment on an otherwise stellar album, but to me, this is the real Roger Taylor: bored with life and slumming around billiard halls instead of educating himself, the teenager finds music, and the rest, they say, is history. Songs about ennui and lethargy are rarely exciting, but the musical accouterments – a soaring slide guitar, a thick, Spector-esque Wall Of Sound production treatment, and a chorus of angelic Taylors singing such lines as “It’s the fantastic drowse of the afternoon Sundays / That bore you to rages of tears”. The choir is stripped away for the final verse, leaving just one Taylor muttering indecisively to himself, “Thinkin’ it right, doin’ it wrong / It’s easier from an armchair / Waves of alternatives wash at my sleepiness / Have my eggs poached for breakfast, I guess”.

24. ‘Sail Away Sweet Sister’
Written by Brian May
From the album: The Game, 1980

As Queen became more commercial, subtler non-single songs became a scarcity on later albums. In the 1980s, every song from an album could have potentially been a single, but it’s the margins on their earlier albums that resonate the heaviest with me – because they weren’t selected for the hit parade, almost begging to be discovered by anyone willing to look beyond the greatest hits. May’s and Taylor’s self-sung songs served as a bit of light relief from the powerhouse of Freddie Mercury, and often allowed them to stretch their writing chops to write something personal, instead of something more universal to appeal to a larger crowd. While it’d have been great to have heard Mercury on lead vocals on some of those songs, they have a certain charm to them, and I always thought it a shame that that disappeared once the band refocused their vision on attaining maximum sales. ‘Sail Away Sweet Sister’ was the last song to feature May on full lead vocals (apart from a verse here or there on later songs, and the 1991 CD single extra track ‘Lost Opportunity’), and is a beauty of a song to go out on. Subtitled “To the sister I never had” on the lyric sheet (May is an only child), the guitarist passes on words of wisdom to his unborn – and probably never conceived – sibling, sung sweetly over a light piano backing before exploding into that traditional Queen power anthem – chords and choirs abound! – for the chorus. Mercury sweeps in quickly for a vocal spotlight in the bridge, but otherwise May is the star of the show here.

23. ‘These Are The Days Of Our Lives’
Written by Queen
From the album: Innuendo, 1991

As a one-time Queen fanatic, my perception of them has dwindled considerably, not only due to other musical discoveries, but also through the process of research. It’s a double-edged sword: I longed to learn as much as I could about them as a youngster, and poured myself into any available resource, but the more I learned, the less magical things became to me. One of the misconceptions I used to have was the democratic crediting of all Queen songs on their last two albums as a four-way split, whereas on previous albums, they had all individually written songs. This was meant to disguise the fact that Mercury was dying, and to split up royalties more evenly, but it presented a stronger, more unified front, which may have not meant much to critics or fans, but certainly meant a lot to each other. ‘These Are The Days Of Our Lives’ has long been attributed to Mercury, as it’s a lovely, unassuming ballad that reflects on the majesty of life. Given that Mercury was not long for this world, I – and many others – looked at the 2 + 2 equation, saw that it equaled 4, and was convinced that was that. Turns out assumptions can bite you in the ass; the song was actually written by Taylor, and may have contained hints of Mercury’s illness, but was mostly about seeing life through his children’s eyes. It didn’t matter who wrote it, anyway; it’s an unparalleled classic on Innuendo, with a vaguely calypso/Caribbean flavor to it, and May’s ethereal guitar solo achieving heights of emotion and poignancy that he had rarely hit before. Fittingly, this was released as a double A-side with ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ two weeks after Mercury’s death, serving as his final word in the hit parade – and what better way to end than with him uttering, “I still love you”?

22. ‘You’re My Best Friend’
Written by John Deacon
From the album: A Night At The Opera, 1975

John Deacon sure went to great lengths to prove he was a capable songwriter. His inauspicious start, ‘Misfire’, was more of a delightful diversion than a serious musical statement (though that didn’t stop Neko Case from covering it in 1997), but there’s a reason you should always root for the underdog. Deacon’s second song was ‘You’re My Best Friend’, which would be like George Harrison progressing from ‘Don’t Bother Me’ immediately to ‘Something’: it’s a gentle pop song, an admission of love to his wife, Veronica, with all of the bubblegum sensibilities to make it a powerful earworm. Issued as the follow-up single to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, its saving grace was that it was nothing at all like that single: short, concise, and to-the-point, the single not only peaked respectably but gave Deacon that much-needed boost to be a songwriter with whom to contend.

21. ‘Save Me’
Written by Brian May
From the album: The Game, 1980

With The Game, Mercury devised a simple method of getting songs onto the album: he and May would write three songs, and Taylor and Deacon would write two. Whichever of those songs were the strongest were up to the discretion of the band, but it’s telling that May’s three contained one funk/rock amalgam, ‘Dragon Attack’, and two powerful ballads, ‘Sail Away Sweet Sister’ and this song. Written about a friend who, May later explained, was going through a tough time, this touching plea for help featured May doing a lot of the grunt work: piano, synthesizer, guitars, and backing vocals, while the rhythm section of Deacon and Taylor moved things along nicely. For all of May’s work, however, he’s overshadowed by the force of Mercury, who heightened the emotion to a great degree. There’s no denying that Mercury’s voice was perfect for a good majority of Queen songs, but every so often there was a misstep (‘Too Much Love Will Kill You’, for example, lacked the true emotion of May’s solo single when it was released on Made In Heaven with Mercury on lead vocals). Not so on ‘Save Me’, where Mercury is so believable that you think he’s the one going through the tough times. That must have taken some work, as Mercury often delivered the songs with tongue planted in cheek, sometimes more forcefully than not, depending on the atmosphere of the song. But when he played it straight, he was able to achieve such languid beauty that you can’t help but feel a slight lump in the back of the throat.

Top 50 Queen Countdown: 40–31

40. ‘Spread Your Wings’
Written by John Deacon
From the album: News Of The World, 1977

John Deacon had the enviable talent of delivering one knock-out song per album, a reputation he upheld throughout his entire songwriting career, and there are several of his songs in these lists. ‘Spread Your Wings’ is a plaintive power ballad, written about a down-on-his-luck loner named Sammy who grew up believing that he was destined for great things, only to be beaten down by the harshness of reality. What makes the song so effective is its simplicity: as it was submitted for News Of The World, Queen’s back-to-basics album, it sounds like it was recorded in one take in the studio, with very little, if any, studio trickery slathered on. (If it had been submitted for any of Queen’s earlier albums, it would have undoubtedly been tarted up with vocal harmonies and guitar orchestrations, which aren’t necessarily a bad thing.) Far superior is a BBC take, which was recorded live in one take, and features a more muscular backing and a double-time instrumental coda.

39. ‘Bijou’
Written by Queen
From the album: Innuendo, 1991

The definition of bijou is “small and elegant”, and that was the band’s intent with this song. Written by Brian May and Freddie Mercury, the song was modeled off of Jeff Beck’s ‘Where Were You’, in that it’s an inside-out song: May’s guitar wails mournfully where Mercury’s lyrics would be, and in the middle, where a guitar solo would be, is a little vocal interjection from Mercury, who sings a brief, four-line ode to a lover. It’s a neat trick that works astonishingly well, and serves as a beautiful introduction to Queen’s swansong, ‘The Show Must Go On’.

38. ‘Radio Ga Ga’
Written by Roger Taylor
From the album: The Works, 1984

Unlike the consistent pop song-crafter Deacon, Roger Taylor’s track record was a little spottier. It got better, under Mercury’s watchful eye, throughout the 1980s, and when ‘Radio Ga Ga’ was released as the first single from The Works, to have had it credited as a Taylor/Mercury composition wouldn’t have been too far off from the truth. That being said, the lyrics are pure Taylor: bemoaning the also-ran status of radio, once a marvelous invention, now replaced by music television, the song is six minutes of delightful electronic pop-rock, with synthesizers masterfully integrated so that they’re part of the atmospherics, and not just there to be there. With a hard-hitting and memorable chorus, ‘Radio Ga Ga’ rightfully washed away the bad taste of Hot Space and Queen’s questionable excursions into disco.

37. ‘Who Wants To Live Forever’
Written by Brian May
From the album: A Kind Of Magic, 1986

Queen’s mid-1980s output can be summed up thusly: three or four killer singles per album, six or seven mediocre-to-great album tracks. The three albums released in this span – The Works, 1984; A Kind Of Magic, 1986; and The Miracle, 1989 – were million-sellers and platinum records for the band, but were designed with an eye on the charts instead of presenting a unified album. That said, there are some songs on these albums worth finding: ‘Who Wants To Live Forever’ is a fairly popular Queen song, and was even released as a single, though it failed to attract much of an audience. But this gorgeous ballad, with keyboards, guitars, Mercury’s powerful, restrained vocals, and the National Philharmonic Orchestra, deserved far better, but being released alongside ‘A Kind Of Magic’ and ‘One Vision’, it’s understandable that a five minute ballad would be pushed out of the consciousness in favor of poppier, rockier stuff – but that doesn’t mean it’s fair.

36. ‘In The Lap Of The Gods…Revisted’
Written by Freddie Mercury
From the album: Sheer Heart Attack, 1974

Queen’s first two albums were rooted more deeply in prog/art rock, so when the comparatively poppy Sheer Heart Attack was released, it was a dynamic shift toward playing the charts while still experimenting with unconventional musical styles. ‘In The Lap Of The Gods’ is an operatic apocalypse, a Dante’s Inferno of otherworldly howling that was the obvious precursor to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ – yet its revisited cousin, which closes the Sheer Heart Attack album, is a power ballad through and through, with Mercury admitting his posturing and pretending is all for show, and that there’s depth beneath his exterior. Taking ‘Hey Jude’ as a template, with an extended singalong chorus that’s equally as meaningless (“Woah woah la la, woah wa woo” instead of “Na na na na na na na, na na na na, hey Jude”), ‘In The Lap Of The Gods…Revisited’ entrenched itself as a set closer for the next three years, though ‘We Are The Champions’ would replace it as that pivotal, arm-swaying, lighter-waving concluding anthem.

35. ‘Was It All Worth It’
Written by Queen
From the album: The Miracle, 1989

With Mercury’s health by this point deteriorating, his doctors were certain that he wouldn’t see the end of 1988, so serious was his condition. That he not only survived but thrived for a further three years was a testament to both modern medicine and his willingness to fight. That paints The Miracle in a different light: convinced this was their final album and testament, Queen rebounded with a goofy, lighthearted listen that, apart from its five singles and one strong album track, was an extension of A Kind Of Magic and The Works before it. That one strong album track is ‘Was It All Worth It’, a defiant, semi-autobiographical summation of a life and career full of ups and downs. Embodying not only everything that made Queen Queen, but also some tricks of the ’80s, the song is a six minute tour de force, with the band throwing everything they’ve got at the wall and finding themselves surprised at what sticks. (There’s a synthesized orchestral interlude in there, fer crying out loud.) Mercury’s in fine voice, sounding jovial and not at all regretful, and his gleeful assessment that “It was a worthwhile experience!” would have been a fine way to end a career. That he got one more chance with Innuendo meant that Queen were able to right some wrongs, and end on an even more traditional note.

34. ‘Las Palabras De Amor (The Words Of Love)’
Written by Brian May
From the album: Hot Space, 1982

The Hot Space album is the unloved bastard child in Queen’s discography: detrimentally experimental with its fusion of funk, disco, and rock, it was a year or two early: the rock world was still reeling from the mass-produced strains of Lipps, Inc., and didn’t need four white, British guys to tell them to get on the dance floor. (It didn’t help that most of the dance songs weren’t very danceable.) But the second side of the album is more traditional Queen, and May, the most ill-at-ease with his band’s excursions, was the most eager to return them to what they knew best. ‘Las Palabras De Amor (The Words Of Love)’ is a flowery ballad that successfully combines synthesizers with acoustic instruments, and comes out smelling sweeter than most everything else. Inspired by Queen’s 1981 South American tour and the warm reception they received there, Mercury occasionally slips into Spanish, sounding like an innocent choirboy, and the result has divided fans – some absolutely adore it, others find it to be a hamfisted rewrite and locale shift of ‘Teo Toriatte (Let Us Cling Together)’ – but isn’t that what Hot Space was all about, anyway?

33. ‘The Millionaire Waltz’
Written by Freddie Mercury
From the album: A Day At The Races, 1976

O, fair listeners! Come hither betwixt legions of admirers to bathe in the glory that is Sire Mercury’s fine wealth! Swoon as he’s perched upon a piano stool, resplendent in a fine lurex suit, as he croons a decadent waltz of the perks of prosperity! Gasp as Lord May leads an orchestra of bewigged Mays, plucking delicate notes of a most exquisite nature! For at today’s outing at the races, Their Royal Majesties request your pounds, shillings, and pence be tossed upon the stage, so that Sire Mercury may festoon himself further with extravagance! May his beloved torch song to fortune forever ring in your hearts, your ears, and your minds, for these are affluent times indeed!

32. ‘Tenement Funster’
Written by Roger Taylor
From the album: Sheer Heart Attack, 1974

Taylor’s songwriting development wasn’t exactly a hit-the-ground-running process. His debut, ‘Modern Times Rock’n'Roll’, was a nifty pastiche of Mott the Hoople’s boogie-woogie glam-rock, while ‘The Loser In The End’ lumbered and galloped without any kind of consequence (though it confirmed that he quite liked John Bonham’s style of drumming). ‘Tenement Funster’, then, is his submission to the songwriter litmus test, and, as the saying goes, the third time’s the charm. Finding his voice as a slacker rebel, rejecting a humdrum existence by angering his neighbors with loud music and wooing girls, Taylor delivers a stellar composition, alternately dark and humorous, which paves the way for his best-known song, ‘I’m In Love With My Car’.

31. ‘Father To Son’
Written by Brian May
From the album: Queen II, 1974

The logical progression of albums is such: the debut gets out all of the material that the band has been living with and slogging endlessly onstage for two or three years, while the second is a grab-bag of songs that were rejected from the debut, mixed with newly-written material, and produced in a manner which is entirely to the band’s liking. At the mercy of a producer on their first album, the band will usually capitulate to common sense, but let their imaginations run wild – and refuse to be told no – on their sophomore effort. With that in mind, Queen II could have easily been called And The Kitchen Sink, as the band throw in every trick of their limited trade, no matter how murky the soup may get. (Fun fact: they were considering calling the album Over The Top, which would have been more apt – and imaginative.) The album attempts to tell a nonlinear story of mystical, mythical worlds, with gods, goddesses, ogres, faeries, black queens, white queens, mothers, fathers, and generation gaps. It’s not entirely successful, but it’s my personal favorite Queen album, so I’m bound to stick up for it no matter what. ‘Father To Son’ is a towering epic, of the passage of a kingdom from one generation to the next. Winding its way through several musical styles – starting off as a ballad before becoming a rocker that would make The Who blush, it ends with an acoustic singalong that blends into the next track – the song is a bit too epic, meandering from time to time with little regard for arrangement. But it allows May to run full reign on his homemade guitar, delivering blistering solo after blistering solo, while the rhythm section of Taylor and Deacon burble excitedly behind him. Unfortunately, it was destined for obscurity, though it remained a concert favorite and was even a show opener for a while – and if you’re used to Queen opening a concert with a fast, electric arrangement of ‘We Will Rock You’ or the anthemic ‘One Vision’, then this little bit of information gives you an indication of Queen’s early days stage presence.

Top 50 Queen Countdown: 50–41

As a sort of promotion for the upcoming US release of my book, Queen: Complete Works, I’ve decided to tackle something I thought about doing for quite some time: a personal Top 50 of their songs. This list is by no means the result of any widespread polling or public opinion; it’s merely my own thoughts on which songs hold significance to me.

Every Tuesday from now until March 13th I’ll post a list of 10 Queen songs that make up my Top 50. In the meantime, feel free to comment or head over to Amazon to pre-order the book.

50. ‘No-One But You (Only The Good Die Young)’
Written by Brian May
From the album: Queen Rocks, 1997

Putting this hard-hitting power ballad on a compilation of rockers might not have been the smartest decision, but, to me, it’s a touching tribute that reunited the original line-up for one last song, right before John Deacon decided that Queen didn’t exist without Freddie Mercury, and he retired for good. Made In Heaven might have been the postscript to the Queen saga, but ‘No-One But You (Only The Good Die Young)’ is a lovely little footnote, and would have been a suitable end – unfortunately, it was about to get much worse, with Brian May and Roger Taylor embarking on a commercially rewarding but creatively dubious series of collaborations with any flash-in-the-pan star with whom the guitarist and drummer decided was worth working.

49. ‘A Human Body’
Written by Roger Taylor
Non-album B-side, 1980

Recorded during sessions for The Game in 1980, ‘A Human Body’ was rejected as being “too melodic” (whatever that means) and consigned to non-album status, while the far inferior ‘Coming Soon’ earned precious real estate on that wildly popular album. ‘A Human Body’ isn’t Taylor’s best song ever, but it has an endearing charm to it: name-checking Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his failed Terra Nova Expedition, the song, as with most of Taylor’s compositions, doesn’t say much, but is a refreshing chaser to the funk-rock path the band was heading down by this time.

48. ‘Ride The Wild Wind’
Written by Queen
From the album: Innuendo, 1991

Though credited to all four band members, ‘Ride The Wild Wind’ was written by Taylor, and is a scorching rocker that reaffirmed Queen’s ability to let loose every once in a while. With a thundering drum performance and some positively ethereal guitar work from May, the song is a mighty strong album track that rivaled some of the other singles from Innuendo, and only further proved that Queen were back on track toward making a cohesive album, instead of a collection of strong singles with a few weaker throwaways to pad out the rest of the album.

47. ‘Don’t Try So Hard’
Written by Queen
From the album: Innuendo, 1991

This May/Mercury co-write (long, falsely attributed to Deacon) is an atmospheric power ballad, with Mercury, by this time in terminal decline, giving his all for an otherworldly vocal performance and May matching his poignant emotion with a transcendent guitar solo. As with ‘Ride The Wild Wind’, ‘Don’t Try So Hard’ is a surprisingly strong album track, and, in other circumstances, might have been a worthy single release.

46. ‘It’s A Hard Life’
Written by Freddie Mercury
From the album: The Works, 1984

While Deacon, Taylor, and May were all married with children, Mercury was a promiscuous fun-seeker, and his torrid affairs have long been a point of gleeful controversy by those who didn’t know him. The truth was, he was a romantic at heart, and longed for a stable relationship; while he would often write tender love songs, there was an underlying current of bachelorhood that showed he wasn’t entirely willing to change his ways. Not so on ‘It’s A Hard Life’, a stand-out track from The Works that is a painfully honest appraisal of his love life. Chosen as the third single from the album, it gave the band another Top 10 hit, but part of me thinks it was a bit too emotionally raw for Queen, and might have been better suited for Mercury’s solo album, Mr. Bad Guy.

45. ‘Lily Of The Valley’
Written by Freddie Mercury
From the album: Sheer Heart Attack, 1974

Then again, this oblique ballad, lasting barely two minutes, is equally as tender and pained as ‘It’s A Hard Life’, and it’d be impossible to imagine Sheer Heart Attack without ‘Lily Of The Valley’. May later hinted that this was Mercury’s admission that his comfortable relationship with his girlfriend, Mary Austin, wasn’t entirely honest, and that he wasn’t too far off from discovering the real him. Closing out the first side medley (which also contained Taylor’s slacker anthem ‘Tenement Funster’ and Mercury’s vicious ‘Flick Of The Wrist’), ‘Lily Of The Valley’ is a sublime album track that is practically a solo performance, apart from the occasional burst of sound from the others.

44. ‘The Prophets Song’
Written by Brian May
From the album: A Night At The Opera, 1975

This riveting epic, lasting an astounding eight minutes and throwing every bit of studio trickery its way in the process, was based on a dream of May’s where he envisioned a prophet ranting wildly of an apocalyptic flood on the side of a mountain to legions of scared followers. The song takes its time to unfold, starting off as a delicate ballad, with May picking tenderly at a toy koto, before the sonic volcano of Deacon and Taylor takes over, turning it into a mid-pace rocker. The middle section of Mercury’s a cappella vocals goes on a bit too long, but its swirling madness only adds to the disconcerting cacophony, and just as the water levels rise, the rains stop, and the tension is alleviated with some dulcet acoustic guitar work. While ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ would attract well-deserved attention, ‘The Prophets Song’ would be unfairly neglected and forgotten over the years, a fate it most definitely does not deserve.

43. ‘It’s Late’
Written by Brian May
From the album: News Of The World, 1977

Queen’s last great towering epic for 14 years, ‘It’s Late’ starts off slow but quickly picks up steam, detailing a (partly autobiographical) torrid love triangle between a man, his wife, and a groupie. As with most of May’s compositions, the message doesn’t objectify the affair but questions its necessity, and the mood is more melancholic than it is triumphant. Released in 1977 just as punk and New Wave was gathering momentum, ‘It’s Late’ might have been a bit too raw and lumbering to put the musical upstarts to shame, but it firmly entrenched Queen’s status as power rockers. (The song was even released as a US single, though its length, at 6 1/2 minutes, was its downfall, and it stumbled to #74.) After this, the band ditched the epics, and focused on tighter, more compact songs, which helped their commercial potential but meant their musical experimentation was far more limited.

42. ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’
Written by Brian May
From the album: Jazz, 1978

Unlike ‘It’s Late’, which handles extramarital affairs with kid gloves and just a tinge of guilt, ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ is a gleeful schoolboy ode to ladies with superior posteriors, and succinctly sums up the “excess all areas” attitude of Queen’s late 1970s after-show parties. (Their infamous Halloween 1978 premiere of Jazz, which took place in New Orleans and saw, among other things, female mudwrestlers and a little person walking around with a tray of cocaine strapped to his head, is the stuff of legend.) This nod to groupies everywhere strikes a C&W chord at times, with the hard-hitting chorus and tub-thumping rhythm instantly endearing it to lager louts at a strip club. Mercury certainly took a shine to the song, and was a prime mover in getting a half dozen nude strippers, perched on bicycles, to appear with the band onstage at Madison Square Garden that same year.

41. ‘A Winter’s Tale’
Written by Queen
From the album: Made In Heaven, 1995

Written by Mercury in the winter of 1990, ‘A Winter’s Tale’ is an unusual song for him, in that it’s merely observational; as the singer retreated to the comfort of Montreux, away from the intrusion of the tabloid press, he gained a new sense of perspective on life, and as he watched swans float by Lake Geneva, this tranquil ballad flowed from his pen. A few short months later, he assembled the rest of Queen to record the song, and it remains one of the last full songs he recorded before he died. Released as a Christmastime single in 1995, it flew to #6 in the UK charts, though it was neglected a prime spot on the Greatest Hits III compilation.