The classic song Chastity Belt would delete from history: “So no one could sing it at karaoke”
In our recent ‘Quick-Fire Questions’ interview with Seattle indie-rock quartet Chastity Belt, their disdain for one much-loved band’s mega, defining hit was made explicitly clear. When asked which ‘classic album’ they’d like to see deleted from history, the band replied: “Whatever Queen album has ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ on it, specifically so no one could sing it at karaoke.” In case there was any confusion about their feeling toward the chamber-pop opus, Chastity Belt also selected the track as their “most annoying song ever.”
Queen’s eventual West End residency among Wicked or Hamilton for Ben Elton’s We Will Rock You feels like the perfect prism to view their anthemic power rock. While their showmanship is undeniable, each of Queen’s biggest hits feels like song standards destined to sit alongside Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar as pieces of amusing theatre for audiences who want to be entertained via spectacle rather than stirred in any meaningful way.
1975’s A Night at the Opera, Queen’s defining album Chastity Belt consigned to the ether of deletion, is a well-deserved pick, even though it’s based on their loathing of its lead single. It is a glossy, bloated chore of a record which sacrifices any real emotional depth for tedious obsessions with the studio’s 24-track recorder to batter you with via atrociously long acapella breaks on ‘The Prophet’s Song’.
Queen possesses a mystery X Factor of supreme irritability with most of what they touch. Their stab at music hall eccentricity on ‘Seaside Rendevous’ grates with its hectic arrangements that are terribly fascinated with their own complexity, and ‘Love Of My Life’ baffles with its cloying melodrama.
The album’s nadir is its finale ‘God Save the Queen’. Apparently inspired by Jimi Hendrix’s Woodstock performance of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner‘, guitarist Brian May skips all of the subversive, political critique that makes Hendrix’s rendition so interesting and pursues an earnest, turgid ‘rock’ cover that’s about as exciting as one of his badger activism efforts.
There are frustrating flashes of greatness, however. Roger Taylor’s ‘I’m In Love With My Car’ is the LP’s saving grace, a ridiculous hard-rock stomper exploring the erotic fascination with a sports car that points to what Queen could’ve been if they lost their lofty, ‘bringing ballet to the working classes’ bollocks. Resurrecting their earlier Led Zeppelin influences on Queen and Queen II, the acapella blighted ‘The Prophet’s Song’ contains a truly evocative intro, lifting Jimmy Page’s twist of folk and hard-rock in a genuine stormer for its first three minutes at least.
This brings us to Queen’s defining song and soundtrack to Chastity Belt’s dreadful karaoke memories. ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ has everything there, aggressively vying for your attention with its self-satisfied production. Its scope across nearly six minutes is commendable, Freddie Mercury’s melodramatic vocals scene-setting, May’s guitar attack memorable, and the lyrical narrative literate and unique. But like everything Queen cuts, it’s all just coated with a stuffy sense of superficial artificiality, a perfect closer to We Will Rock You‘s matinee show over anything touching on how exciting 1970s rock could be.
Queen suffering from ‘dude worship’ at its most tedious extreme, Chastity were a little more conciliatory when discussing another of rock’s lauded deities, The Beatles: “Ok… yes, but it’s not their fault. It’s the way people talk about them… too much dude worship that’s out of their control.”
