Best song by Queen

[Bossy Monkey]

Poll question: Best song by Queen

Repairing karmic damage from previous poll. It's easy to think of ten, so give me your "Other" choices in your replies (or if you want to break up "We Will Rock You/We Are The Champions" or if you can't pick just one, etc)

The suspense is killing me...

[commander bunnypants]

1. Love Queen

Many songs are wonderful. But I vote for Keep your self alive.


DDQM

[vi5]

2. I voted for Bicycle Race/Fat Bottom Girls even though..

I don't like Bicycle Race. But FBG is just such a smokin' song I couldn't pass it up.

[meegbear]

11. It was released as a double A side

On Jazz, there is a song (Jealousy) in between.

[GOPisEvil]

4. Keep Yourself Alive!

Wow - that was like picking a favorite child - just like the REM thread yesterday.

[rjbcar27]

3. Fat Bottomed Girls

Top, top tune.

[latebloomer]

5. My mother-in-law

who just turned 70 and has been a lifelong opera and classical music buff, FELL IN LOVE with Freddie Mercury a few years ago. I'm talking teenage girl hormonal CRUSH!! I was helping her move last month and she must have had 40 Queen videotapes. Go figure. . .

[commander bunnypants]

7. whaddya expect

Freddie had an awesome set of lungs.


DDQM

[LincolnMcGrath]

6. Fat Bottom Girls

Are you gonna take me home tonight
Ah down beside that red firelight
Are you gonna let it all hang out
Fat bottomed girls
You make the rockin' world go round

Hey I was just a skinny lad
Never knew no good from bad
But I knew life before I left my nursery
Left alone with big fat Fanny
She was such a naughty nanny
Heap big woman you made a bad boy out of me
Hey hey!

I've been singing with my band
Across the wire across the land
I seen ev'ry blue eyed floozy on the way
But their beauty and their style
Went kind of smooth after a while
Take me to them dirty ladies every time

Oh won't you take me home tonight?
Oh down beside your red firelight
Oh and you give it all you got
Fat bottomed girls you make the rockin' world go round
Fat bottomed girls you make the rockin' world go round

Hey listen here
Now your mortgages and homes
I got stiffness in the bones
Ain't no beauty queens in this locality (I tell you)
Oh but I still get my pleasure
Still got my greatest treasure
Heap big woman you gonna make a big man out of me
Now get this

Oh you gonna take me home tonight (please)
Oh down beside your red firelight
Oh you gonna let it all hang out
Fat bottomed girls you make the rockin' world go round
Fat bottomed girls you make the rockin' world go round
Get on your bikes and ride

Oooh yeah them fat bottomed girls
Fat bottomed girls
Yeah yeah yeah
Fat bottomed girls
Yes yes

[sexybomber]

17. That song was the original song praising "ghetto booty"

All those rappers are ripping off Freddie Mercury.

[Tikki]

8. 'Tie Your Mother Down'

eom

[Rooktoven]

9. It's Late

From News of the World

[GCP]

10. "You're my best friend"

Swwt song. Freddie was wonderful, I still miss him.

[SiouxJ]

14. Agreed! One of the all time classic intros

great heart felt lyrics. Amazing song all around.

[Aristus]

12. ' '39'.

It was written and sung by Brian May, and doesn't feature Freddie Mercury. But it shows the depth and versatility of the group. It's an unbearably sad song, (if you can figure out what it is about) but a beautiful one. It's hands down my favorite.

[maveric]

22. My favorite Queen tune.

I also like "Tie you mother down".

[0rganism]

36. I always figured it was about the hazards of near-light-speed travel

But I might be wrong about that.

Lessee...

> 'In the year of thirty-nine'
> Assembled here the volunteers
> In the days when lands were few

So this is in the not-too-distant future, as we run out of arable land on Earth...

> Here the ship sailed out into the blue and sunny morn
> The sweetest sight ever seen
> And the night followed day

The ship launches in the morning, and soon leaves the atmosphere...

> And the story tellers say
> That the score brave souls inside

Note "inside" rather than "aboard", for those who contend it's about a watergoing ship of some sort. My inferance is "sealed inside".

> For many a lonely day
> Sailed across the milky seas
> Never looked back never feared never cried

"milky seas" is a spacey reference to the galaxy.

> Don't you hear my call
> Though you're many years away
> Don't you hear me calling you
> Write your letters in the sand
> For the day I'll take your hand
> In the land that our grand-children knew

This is the lament of an astronaut, as he approaches lightspeed. Relativity will age his wife/lover far faster than him, and he'll return after their grandchildren have grown up.

> 'In the year of thirty-nine'
> Came a ship from the blue
> The volunteers came home that day

I surmise this 39 is in the next century.

> And they bring good news
> Of a world so newly born

The explorers found a livable planet.

> Though their hearts so heavily weigh
> For the earth is old and grey

The people they knew when they left are dead and gone.

> Little darlin' we'll away
> But my love this cannot be
> Oh so many years have gone
> Though I'm older than a year
> Your mothers eyes from your eyes cry to me

The astronaut sees his wife in the eyes of her descendent. He's aged about a year, and the earthbound have aged a hundred. His wife is dead, and it's time to leave again to populate the next planet.

That's my take, anyway. Yeah, a very sad song.

> All your letters in the sand
> Cannot heal me like your hand
> For my life still ahead pity me

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

13. Spread Your Wings

Ready, Freddy!

[NashVegas]

15. Crazy Little Thing

Classic songwriting, transcends genre, appeal goes far beyond the 17-34 year old male demographic.

[TriadLeftist]

16. Great King Rat

Think about it - EOM

[HuckleB]

18. Bicycle! Fat Bottoms!

No question about it.

[Bossy Monkey]

19. Kick to see if the afternoon crew can knock off Boho Rhapso (n/t)

[mac56]

20. "Need Your Loving Tonight"

nm

[supernova]

21. Killer Queen

Is my other fav. Probably evenmoreso than B.R.

[0rganism]

35. Yay! Another Killer Queen Fan!

She keeps Moet et Chandon
In her pretty cabinet
'Let them eat cake' she says
Just like
Marie Antoinette
A built-in remedy
For Kruschev and Kennedy
At anytime an invitation
You can't decline

Caviar and cigarettes
Well versed in etiquette
Extraordinarily nice

CHORUS:
She's a Killer Queen
Gunpowder, gelatine
Dynamite with a laser beam
Guaranteed to blow your mind
Anytime

Recommended at the price
Insatiable an appetite
Wanna try?

To avoid complications
She never kept the same address
In conversation
She spoke just like a baroness
Met a man from China
Went down to Geisha Minah
Then again incidentally
If you're that way inclined

Perfume came naturally from Paris
For cars she couldn't care less
Fastidious and precise

CHORUS

[Loyal]

23. Under Pressure

That song was awesome.

[Chovexani]

24. Who Wants to Live Forever

I love Bohemian Rhapsody as much as the next dork, but Who Wants to Live Forever is the best song Queen ever did. Hauntingly beautiful, makes me cry every time I hear it, and it perfectly encapsulates the beauty and the tragedy of the Immortal mythos.

Of course, I'm also a BIG Highlander fan, so YMMV.

[Kat45]

25. "Tie Your Mother Down"

That song rocked!

[AntiCoup2K4]

26. Stone Cold Crazy

Sleeping very soundly on a Saturday morning
I was dreaming I was Al Capone
There's a rumour going round
Gotta clear outa town
I'm smelling like a dry fish bone
Here come the law gonna break down the door
Gonna carry me away once more
Never never I never want it anymore
Gotta get away from this stone cold floor
Crazy stone cold crazy you know

Rainy afternoon I gotta blow a typhoon
And I'm playing on my slide trombone
Anymore anymore cannot take it anymore
Gotta get away from this stone cold floor
Crazy stone cold crazy you know

Walking down the street
Shooting people that I meet
With my rubber Tommy water gun
Here come the deputy
He's gonna come and get me
I gotta get me up and run
They got the sirens loose
I ran right outa juice
They're gonna put me in a cell
If I can't go to heaven
Will they let me go to hell?
Crazy stone cold crazy you know


Anything they did in the 70's was pure genius. Narrowing it down to one is impossible.

Get the 'Crown Jewels' box if you can find it. All the classic Queen albums up to and including The Game. None of the Flash Gordon/Radio Gaga 80's crap. Better sound than the Hollywood reissues from the early 90's.

[Spirochete]

27. The "Don't" ones...

Don't Try Suicide

Don't Stop Me Now

[Nlighten1]

28. Fat bottom girls you make the rocking world go round..

one of the finest rock songs ever written

[ScottNeelan]

29. Tough Choice

I absolutely love Queen. They did some amazing songs over their career and Freddie Mercury was a musical genius. I love pretty much everything they've released, but unfortunately I had to pick one, so I went with probably the most obvious choice, "Bohemian Rhapsody". I mean, how many other songs could become a huge hit in the 70s (not sure of the peak chart position...I may be a music nut, but I'm not THAT nuts), fade away, only to come back around 15-20 years later (not sure of exact numbers here) and reach #2?

The way it starts out so somber and sad, then becomes so off-the-wall goofy, and then somehow manages to shift to anger without losing anything and changing musical styles the whole time makes it one of the greatest rock songs of all time (IMO, naturally). It was the first Queen song I ever heard, and I actually wore out a cassette copy of their Greatest Hits listening to this song. It's simply one of my all-time favorite songs, so it (barely) got my vote...

("Fat Bottomed Girls" was my second choice, BTW)

[CanuckAmok]

30. I picked "Under Pressure", but only beacause...

..."Ogre Battle", "Seven Seas of Rhye", and "Death on Two Legs" weren't listed!

[jenm]

31. Soundtrack of my teens

All of them are great. But Wayne and Garth in the Gremlin doing the head jerk thing. Holey moley, what a riot. I used to to the head jerk thing...

[Nevernose]

32. The soundtracks!

"Flash!....Ah-ahh, he can save everyone of us!" (or maybe "savior of the universe?")

And the Highlander soundtrack..."Princes of the Universe" rocked, and featured a sword fight.

And the cool song that the really goofy kid in "Iron Eagle" plays when it's time to murder Arabs, that was a great song, too.

[Duncan Grant]

33. I'm In Love With My Car - from 'A Night at The Opera'

Ah, March 1976...what a time it was. What a shame Freddie never came out. Elton John, David Bowie, Freddie Mercury...

Queen (moment of daydreaming)...that Freddie was such a subversive little shit. :evilgrin:

[Barad Simith]

34. '39

From A Night At The Opera, '39 was Queen's 39th song (if you count the first song on side one of their debut album as number one, and go from there).

Can you hear my call, though you're many years away
Can you hear me calling you?
Write your letters in the sand, for today I take your hand
In the land that our grandchildren knew.

[Cosmic_Latte]

37. My picks

In order:
Bohemian Rhapsody (absolute favorite)
We Are the Champions, tied with We Will Rock You
Under Pressure

:-)