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.

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