The 1977 song Elton John thought no one could beat: “So good at what it does”
There tends to be a sense of competition when certain artists have been in the spotlight long enough. Usually, people will just write songs to follow their muse, but when there’s a new school of players coming in riding their coattails, that’s the moment where the best artists start to remind everyone why they were so revered in the first place.
Although Elton John really didn’t need to prove his chops as one of the finest songwriters in the world, he did admit that no amount of his anthems was going to dethrone Queen’s ‘We Are the Champions’.
Then again, it would be easy to put both Queen and John in the same box in the 1970s. Aside from both acts favouring the glamorous side of rock and roll, each of them had a far more sophisticated way of approaching music than your average rock band. They had their background in blues in places, but some of their best work could sit next to classical compositions in terms of complexity.
That shared sense of grandeur is part of what made comparisons between the two almost inevitable. Both artists understood how to build a song into something larger than life, but they approached that idea from completely different emotional angles.
Where Elton often leaned into storytelling and melody, Queen thrived on scale and spectacle. It’s that difference that made ‘We Are the Champions’ such a unique beast, less a song and more a communal experience designed to be shouted back by thousands at once.
At the same time, John never saw himself in the same vein as the other glam rockers who were coming in behind him. He fashioned himself in the vein of singer-songwriters like James Taylor and Carole King, and he wanted to make sure his music reflected that kind of craftsmanship. So basically, imagine Paul Simon if he were really into sequined suits, and you’re somewhere in the ballpark.
Granted, it’s not like John was a snob about what he was writing. Across every one of his albums, he was unafraid to take chances, and when he started coming up with ‘Philadelphia Freedom’, it was almost a challenge to himself to see if he could write his own version of a jock jam for Billie Jean King’s tennis team of the same name.
It’s still a good song, but it’s far from the kind of pump-up track that most people would be clamouring. There are pieces of it that work, but given that it’s still being banged out on a piano, most gymnasiums would be much more likely to throw on some Led Zeppelin instead. In fact, ‘Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting’ is a far better indicator of what John could do, but that kind of kickass is a lot more muted this time around.
Although John tried his best, he admitted defeat compared to what Freddie Mercury could do with this kind of song, telling The Guardian, “We Are The Champions can’t be beaten: it’s so good at what it does, any sport can use it. Queen had that market sewn up, which was hysterical because Freddie Mercury hated sport; he knew nothing about it at all.”
Do you really need to be well-versed in any sport to write something like ‘We Are the Champions’, though? It certainly might help if you’re a football fan, but even if someone is the least coordinated person on the field, everyone knows what it’s like to overcome adversity against a scenario that seemed stacked against them before it even got started.
And there’s no better indicator of John admitting defeat than watching the tune’s performance at Live Aid. ‘Philadelphia Freedom’ is still a good song teetering on the edge of great, but ‘We Are the Champions’ will be the kind of tune that gets legions of fans on their feet in a stadium every single time it gets played.
