HFM of the Clannnnnn FM 🏴‍☠️🛸

In 1977, Brian May was told his Queen song would never get radio play. 1,000,000,000 streams later, it became their biggest anthem. Brian May didn’t ever want to apologise for wearing all of his influences on his sleeve. Throughout Queen’s discography, he was always the one bringing something slightly more abrasive to the fold, and the combination of his heavy riffs, combined with Freddie Mercury’s campy demeanour, is what made them such an unstoppable force when they first got onstage. But when they started playing their songs live, they started to realise that their most treasured tunes belonged to the audience just as much as they belonged to them whenever they played along with them. There was nothing stopping them from making the best rock tracks they could, but their audiences were really the fifth member of the band. They could turn in some of the most hypnotic rock and roll songs ever made and even manage to write a few kickass riffs here and there, but when you’re in front of a massive audience, most people are just going to pray that they don’t have things thrown at them whenever they launch into one of their songs in their earliest days. As it turned out, though, the market for bringing some more theatricality to rock and roll was fairly high, and in an age when artists like David Bowie were taking over the world, Queen were never that far behind. But for all of the outlandish stage outfits that they wore from time to time, May figured that there was a way to connect with the audience on a much more visceral level than just being traditional rock stars. He already had a problem with people constantly screaming for them instead of listening to the music, but that’s not really a choice he got to make. Their greatest inspirations, like Led Zeppelin, had people dissecting what they were doing every single time they played, but there was a lot more fun to be had when May started to lean into the participation side of their music every time they played. The audience was the loudest thing whenever they performed, so why not make them part of the act when working on a tune like ‘We Will Rock You’? The whole band may have been a bit lenient when it came to having a song with no real instruments, but when everyone got to clapping, and Mercury sang the lyrics, it was the kind of feeling that made the hairs on your arms stand up when you heard it. Even when the band was finishing up the record, though, May was told by Roger Taylor that the band were never going to have a hit with a song like that, saying, “Roger had severe misgivings about it. He said, ‘No radio station is ever going to play this! It doesn’t sound like a rock song.’ But I fought that corner. And generally, I didn’t win those arguments, but this time I won. So that was the beginning of the album.” Given where Queen has gone ever since that song, though, there’s a good chance that May didn’t need to work a day in his life after writing this song alone. He lived for trying out new things, but having a tune that was all about giving the audience something to do was a work of mad genius, to the point where the song feels more like a part of Western culture than a traditional pop song these days. Anyone who has ever gone to a sporting event in the past 25 years has undoubtedly stomped and clapped their way through this song at least once, and while Taylor may have had his doubts, there was no reason to think that no instruments would be a detriment to them. Queen had a habit of going over the top, but even if they had no instruments at their disposal, they could still make some of the greatest rock and roll anyone had ever heard. #Queen #WeWillRockYou #BrianMay