Tag: Queen

Advent song for December 14: Thank God It’s Christmas

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music

I’ve turned around on Queen over the years. I used to think their songs were dreary middle-of-the-road plodding, which I think is more to do with the kind of people who deliberately listen to Queen albums (sorry if that’s you) rather than their music. (Also, I wasn’t always sure, as a child, which was Queen and which was Status Quo.) After a while, having heard more of their songs, I used to say “I don’t like Queen except Bohemian Rhapsody and Don’t Stop Me Now“, and then the list of songs I liked got gradually longer until it was faster to list the songs I didn’t like and now I can just say “I like Queen except for We Will Rock You and Another One Bites The Dust.” Which is no quicker to say, but has the advantage of making me sound less of an asshole.

Anyway. Thank god it’s Christmas indeed. I have six working days left before Christmas and I’m feeling every single one of them.

Advent song for December 15

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music

What I like about the video for Bohemian Rhapsody, which reached number one for the second time following Freddie Mercury’s death in November 1991, is that they didn’t fiddle around with it to make it a tribute to him; they just rereleased the original version, which is about as good a tribute as you could hope for. Freddie had frontman swagger and the voice of an angel – two things which should be prerequisites for a singer, but which mainly aren’t – and I could watch him for days.

(In my mind, the first invasion of Iraq and the death of Freddie Mercury are forever linked, despite having (a) happened ten months apart and (b) had differing worldwide significance, because each of them resulted in someone in my class being too upset to come to assembly that day. I can even remember who it was in each case, but perhaps it’s not polite to mention their names here.)