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Anorak News | Bismillah No! 10 reasons to hate Queen

Bismillah No! 10 reasons to hate Queen

by | 27th, November 2008

Queen rank alongside Abba as one of those bands that EVERYONE seems to love. Saying you don’t worship at the altar of Mercury and co is generally greeted with dumfounded looks, and maybe even some disappointed tutting. It seems as though even the coolest kids can see the benefit of Bohemian Rhapsody and have no idea of the downside of Don’t Stop Me Now

But not me. To my mind Queen are the most over-rated acts in the history of popular music – and here’s why…

1 Queen never made a Great album
Queen were a singles band, like Brother Beyond or any current X-Factor wannabe. In fact, they probably would have been on the X-Factor if they were around now. Singles and videos they had plenty of – but how many times do you see a Queen album in a top 100 albums list? Night at the Opera, oh give me a break. Ask anyone what their favourite Queen album is and nine out of ten times they will say Greatest Hits.

2 That Live Aid Performance

I can almost feel the stones being readied, but c’mon, a bit of over-the-top, vaguely fascistic grandstanding and we all have to hail it as the greatest concert performance ever. Nonsense! For starters it was only 20 minutes long! No, I say no! It was just a bit less rubbish than most of the other stuff on there – and nowhere near as good as U2’s rudely truncated stint earlier in the day. Here’s a reminder.

3 They broke the Sun City boycott
In the words of uber fan Ben Elton – a little bit of politics. They played Sun City during apartheid, Steve Van Zant told me in his protest song, Ain’t Gonna Play Sun City. Do I need to explain that they it for money, and it was a very, very bad thing to do. No matter how much Brian May back-pedals and says he doesn’t agree with a cultural boycott, one was in place.

4 ‘Jaws was never my scene and I don’t like Star Wars’
Sorry Freddie, Jaws is one of the best films ever made IMO, and as for Star Wars, it was my pretty much my life growing up so you can sod right off.

5 They reformed without Freddie Mercury
What kind of money grabbing foolishness is that! They are touring now! With some bloke out of Free! It’s like INXS without Hutchence, The Jam without Weller, or Zeppelin without Plant! They’d never have done… what? …ooh right….

7. That poster that came with Jazz
Okay, I must admit that at first my parent’s copy of Jazz on vinyl was intriguing, especially with that fold-out poster of lots of ladies on bicycles… naked ladies on bicycles. But to a sensitive pre-teen boy it was downright confusing. I liked what I saw, but didn’t really understand it. Was this image taken from Grandstand? Was this a proper sport? Surely that’s unhygienic? Why would they confuse a boy like that!

8 We Will…
Don’t get me started on the West end musical

9 We Will …

I said don’t get me started…

10 Rock You!

Okay then, you asked for it. What a load of old twaddle. The music of Queen saves the future world or some such Bill And Tedesque nonsense. And, to make it even worse, it’s written by bloody Ben Elton. They played some of it at the ceremony that launched the start of London’s Olympic hosting, and if that’s the best we can offer the world when 2012 I’m booking my holidays now!

Shaun

More of this music-related malarkey at Anorak’s sister site PopJunkie



Posted: 27th, November 2008 | In: Celebrities Comments (100) | TrackBack | Permalink