Songwriting: Critical Listening and Composition - 'Queen'
Queen are one of the biggest and most epic bands of all time, and most certainly one of the biggest british bands ever. The bands line-up consisted of Freddie Mercury (lead vocals, piano), Brian May (guitar, vocals), Roger Taylor (drums, vocals), and John Deacon (bass guitar).
I will be discussing what makes Queen so unique to any other band and to do so I will be talking about the defining characteristics of a Queen recording, the common instrumentation and how is it used, and what particular techniques are used by the band.
Signature sound and recording techniques:
Firstly I shall begin with talking about the defining characteristics of a Queen recording and I will start with the signature vocal recording style. Queen’s ‘epic’ sound is evident in five main ways. The first concerns the group’s production and treatment of instrumental and vocal textures. Queen was renowned for the consistent presence of three- and four-part multi-layered backing vocal sections in their songs, sometimes with two separate three-part arrangements layered on top of each other. Three of the band members, Freddie Mercury, Brian May, and Roger Taylor were singers; the three of them would sing each note of each chord into the microphone at the same time. This way, a three-note chord would be sung by nine voices. Each chord would then be recorded up to four times, with the total arrangement either being spread across the centre of the stereo image or split for the left and right channels. This process gave the vocals a signature style that you don't hear from anybody else, and makes a Queen song very identifiable to listeners.
Songwriting abilities: Queen is one few bands in which all members were very proficient song writers with each member writing songs that became massive hits, here are some example for which member wrote which hit.
Freddie Mercury wrote Don't Stop Me Now, Bohemian Rhapsody, Somebody To Love, Crazy Little Thing Called Love and We Are The Champions.
John Deacon wrote Another One Bites The Dust, I Want To Break Free and You're My Best Friend.
Roger Taylor wrote Radio Ga Ga and A Kind Of Magic as well as These Are The Days Of Our Lives.
Brian May wrote Fat Bottomed Girls, We Will Rock You, and Who Wants To Live Forever?
These are songs that are well known anthems around the world. To have any one of these songwriters in any band would make that band very successful, but to have a band comprising of all four? that is something that made Queen on a completely different level to any other band in history.
What makes having four songwriters in the band something that helped Queen attain their status, was that they had 4 creative minds all working and creating ideas. The bonus to this is that queen can be identified through many genres, and with songs coming from four different minds you are bound to get 4 different styles of music which made them very diverse.
Who have Queen influenced?: Some of the musicians that have cited the band as an influence include: Anthrax, Kurt Cobain, Def Leppard, Foo Fighters, Green Day, Guns N' Roses, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Kansas, Manic Street Preachers, Marianas Trench, Marilyn Manson, Metallica, Mika, Muse, Radiohead, The Smashing Pumpkins, Styx, Lady Gaga,
While there are many more artists and bands who have influenced Queen, the ones I have listed shows just how far and wide in terms of musical genres Queen have reached. From metal bands like Metallica and Anthrax, to current pop artists like Lady Gaga, to the anthemic chaotic trio that is Muse.
Queen fused so many styles of music into their style, from Opera, to hard rock, to pop, to stadium rock that this is why so many from bands from so many genres cite Queen as an influence, it's not hard to see why Queen bleeds into the conscience of so many artists.
