“They understood it so well”: The 1977 Queen song that reduced Brian May to tears
Music has always meant more than notes on a page for any aspiring musician. Whenever someone finds enough power in one of your songs to sing along with it in concert, few other feelings compare to it on this Earth.
While Queen has been known for having songs destined for stadiums around the world, Brian May remembered that this classic made him weep the first time that he heard the audience singing along with them.
But as much as Queen seems like the soundtrack to every sports stadium these days, they were one of the most eccentric bands on Earth during their time together. Even though a tune like ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ has gone down in history as one of the staples of arena rock that everyone follows, are we going to ignore how weird it is, especially in the middle section where everything devolves into a mini-opera?
It didn’t make sense for the mainstream, but it made all the sense in the world once everyone got their heads around it in the studio. Even when they managed to follow it up with A Day at the Races, the group still took chances, like the gospel choir they created on ‘Somebody to Love’ or singing entire songs in another language like ‘Teo Torriatte’.
By the time that News of the World began, though, they were staking their claim as one of the biggest stadium acts of all time. There were still tunes that were more subdued, like ‘Sleeping on the Sidewalk’, but no one could be bothered to care when the tunes hit as well as ‘Spread Your Wings’ or the absolute smack in the face of ‘Sheer Heart Attack’.
The band had also started thinking differently about the relationship between themselves and the audience. Rather than simply writing songs for people to listen to, Queen were creating moments that thousands of fans could experience together. Every massive chorus and carefully placed pause felt designed to invite the crowd into the performance, making each concert feel less like a recital and more like a celebration everyone happened to be attending.
Although May got his credentials as a stadium-rock god for penning ‘We Will Rock You’, ‘We Are the Champions’ is a far better-constructed song on paper. From the moment that the chorus unfolds and Mercury starts belting to the rafters on the chorus, they probably knew that no one in the audience was going to be silent during that section.
Even though May was prepared for a strong reaction, he didn’t anticipate getting emotional when he heard the entire crowd chanting their song, saying, “When we did that special concert when the song was first performed, the fans were wonderful. They understood it so well. I know it sounds corny, but it brought tears to my eyes.”
But part of the reason why the tune works so well is because of the communal atmosphere behind it all. The band could have written it with Mercury singing “I am the champion”, but making the whole thing feel like a victory for everyone made the invisible line between the lip of the stage and the first few rows of fans disappear for a split second.
That’s probably why the song has outgrown the band itself. Whether it’s echoing around a football stadium, celebrating an Olympic triumph or closing out a rock concert, ‘We Are the Champions’ has become something people instinctively reach for when they want to share a moment of triumph.
So, really, ‘We Are the Champions’ is far more poetic than its reputation as the de facto song that plays whenever someone’s favourite football team wins. It’s about the idea that people could be seen as strangers in some respects, but when they are put on the same team and win, they go back to that same familial sense of love that nothing can compare to.
