The 1974 song Brian May called pop at its finest: “Pure pop perfection”
Queen was never the kind of band that could be defined by one genre.
Every single one of their albums felt like a chance to play with as many styles as they could, and when looking through their body of work, you were never sure whether you were going to get one of the greatest rock and roll songs of all time, an R&B style smash, a heavy metal song, or a showtune across the track list. But throughout their entire career, Brian May always felt that it was the most satisfying getting their pop songs finalised.
Then again, it’s hard to really tell what “pop” meant to Queen. Some of their biggest songs had a lot more baggage behind them, and when you look through a lot of their greatest moments, it’s not like you could call ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ a popular song in every sense of the word. It was practically prog-rock in its construction, but when every part of the song is its own separate hook, there comes a point where everyone listening does really need to care all that much.
But for May’s contributions, he was always the one who was bringing in the heavier tunes into the mix. Every one of his tracks was based around having one or two killer guitar riffs in them, and while Freddie Mercury could match him note for note on any of their songs, he had a lot more of a sweet tooth for melodies. No one was going to sell a song quite like Mercury, so if he was going to dominate the song, he was going to need the right kind of musical setup to play with.
And while tunes like ‘Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon’ are some of the most Mercury-esque songs that he ever wrote, he was still earnest when he needed to be. ‘Love of My Life’ is one of his most beautiful ballads, and ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ showed everyone that he could embrace some silliness when he needed to, but there was no one arguing when the band came out with a tune like ‘Killer Queen’.
A song about a high-society call girl may have been a bit risque to put on the radio at the time, but May knew that Mercury could sell the song to virtually anyone if he tried, saying, “This is a perfect pop record and one of Freddie’s greatest songs. It’s beautifully constructed, and it’s also got one of the solos I’m most proud of. Every slice of that record is pure pop perfection. Little things that visit once and come again, like the little bell in the second verse.”
A lot of those little extensions were practically lifted straight from The Beatles’ playbook, but Queen were never ones to show their influences too much. They were clearly taken by the way that songs were constructed, but ‘Killer Queen’ was their greatest pop triumph up until that point. Now, if only they had been paid for it, they would have been able to actually celebrate their achievements.
Having one of the biggest songs in the country doesn’t normally mean that the band goes broke, but since they were wrapped up in legal trouble at the time with their management, they were tasked with going back to the drawing board once again. The rest of the public were eager to hear what was coming next, and since they needed to pull themselves out of the doldrums however they could, A Night at the Opera was their attempt to go into the studio and create the best album ever made.
So, really, ‘Killer Queen’ is one of the most important songs that the band ever made. All of the guitar work and fantastic harmonies are enough to put it in the top tier of Queen tracks, but had they not realised what was happening once the tune took off, maybe that wouldn’t have had the same kind of hunger that ended up steering them to their masterpiece.
