I’ve been listening to a lot of Queen lately. There is a serious argument that can be made that they are the best rock band of all time. They are the best live band I’ve ever heard. Queen performs songs that I don’t like and they make them great when they perform them live.
Queen is much more than just We Will Rock You and Bohemian Rhapsody.
Somebody to Love or Under Pressure are probably their best songs.
Anyone else agree?
Lots of people do; do a search.
They’re very underrated. I’ve realized that Queen is the band I thought The Doors were when I was a teenager. Next decade it might be someone else, of course, but Queen is definitely underrated.
I don’t know if they’re the absolute best (I still have a weakness for the Beatles) but they get my vote for being in the top five. They turned songs into fantastic adventures!
This reminds me of something I’ve been wanting to ask for some time: Are there any other groups out there that do something similar? Not just imitating Queen but adding their own touch to create a unique but ear-gripping style like Queen did.
I wanted to add this but missed the edit window:
I don’t know if that’s very clear but I feel Queen wasn’t around long enough for my taste and I find myself wanting to know what else is out there in a similar vein. Thanks for any suggestions!
A lot of what I like about Queen, I also like about The Cure and The Smiths.
No.
Queen is underrated, but there are many other bands that are better.
As far as being underrated; you’ve got to be kidding. At least on this board anyway, and maybe before Freddie Mercury died. But since his death, they seem to get a lot
of attention and admiration.
I think they were/are good. But for me, I wouldn’t even put them in my top 40 bands of all time.
Agreed. People who think Queen is the best rock band of all time are the same sort of people who would think the Diamondbacks are the best team in baseball. IOW, the terminally deluded. 
I pondered the idea for a while a few years ago. Freddie Mercury and Brian May are definitely within the top 10 of all time in their fields, but what have Roger Deacon and John Taylor ever done for us - other than be in Queen?
Consider Zepplin, where Page and Plant are tops in their fields (if you dig Plant’s vocals … at least he’s a good showman) PLUS you have Bonham on drums (sorry JPJ!) and they edge out Queen.
I don’t know that members of The Beatles were particularly better technical musicians/singers than Queen or Zepplin, but their catalog is more “accessible” than those 2, I think. I highly doubt we’d have been blown away by a post-Rubber-Soul stage show as we’d be blown away by a Queen show.
I got a new appreciation for Queen recently after seeing the “We Will Rock You” musical (in Bangkok, no less). It was massively fun, and the songs rocked. I’d like to hear more of them.
Roger Taylor wrote a lot of the greatest Queen songs, and on the earlier albums did a lot of the singing. His first solo album, Fun in Space, is brilliant. His percussion, songwriting, and singing are a HUGE part of what makes peak-Queen great.
They’re one of my favorites, but for all the incredible music they produced in the '70s, they went into a serious decline in the '80s, IMO. A Kind of Magic, The Miracle and Innuendo had none of the experimentation, none of the humor, and none of the radical style changes from song to song. The musical skill was still there, but it was all wasted on pop-heavy power ballads. Very well-performed crap, but still crap. They went from being one of the outstanding bands of an era to an upgraded version of Foreigner.
I’m not a Queen fan myself. I’m a metal guy but Queen does impress me. FMs voice was something else and the music almost had an orchestral quality to it.
I guess I’m saying I don’t own any queen but I can definitely see why others adore them.
The Eagles of Death Metal, I think has a nouveau grip on what made Queen tick.
I don’t hold them up as comparable musicians, rather artists in their own right, espiritu sancti.
A lot of Europeans seem to think that Queen is the best rock band of all time. VH1 Europe has a top ten show that I used to watch a lot (I have a weakness for countdown shows) and Queen was virtually always in the top one or two, no matter what the subject matter was.
I don’t. But they were goddamn great. The Beatles were better but I don’t consider them a “rock” band.
I heard Diamond Dave prattle on about how VH modeled themselves after Queen. I think that is a fair assessment. But I think VH went farther thanks to Ed. Humble Pie is not to be overlooked, not only in talent but stage presence.
Stones - great
Led Zep - great
Queen - great
Van Halen - great
Humble Pie - great
Top honors? Led Zepplin.
Also: Edna Swap.
I don’t know anyone who doesn’t give them their due as a great band - they maybe got a bit past it though into the 80s in a way that the other legends of the 70s did not. They don’t have that time capsule quality of Led Zep, or The Who, say.
Growing up in the 80s Queen were a really popular band at School amongst young kids, but as soon as we got old enough to listen to stuff away from our parents record collections they were seen as extremely lame. This wasn’t just typical adolescent angst - they really were shite in the late 80s / 90s. Finding out that their 70s stuff (sheer heart attack, News of the world etc) was awesome, came as a big surprise.
No.
Led Zep forever, baby.