I think the Scissor Sisters probably come the closest. I don’t really listen to a lot of current music, but after discovering them by running across one of their videos, they’ve quickly become one of my favorite bands.
The Darkness certainly had '70s Queen pegged in stage style if not exactly the music.
Seconded.
After their 80s and 90s output, I think a lot of people don’t realise how incredibly varied and high quality their 70s music was. That they were once a band who boasted with a sticker that “no synthesizers were used on this album”.
If I had to choose between the non-single tracks on A Night at the Opera, and every song they made after The Game, I would choose the former. Let me keep Death on Two Legs, '39, Love of My Live, Prophet Song, etc, and you can have Heaven for Everyone, It’s a Kind of Magic and all that pop stuff.
I was a huge fan of the first 3 albums. Waited out overnight in winter to get tix for the white and the black tour at the old Chicago Stadium. The Day/Night at are decent - but then a huge drop off. Of course, I was in HS at the time. Probably liked Rush just as much.
Still like a lot of Queen’s stuff, as does my HS son. But my tastes have changed. Not sure I’d put Queen above the Clash - or maybe not even Social D for that matter.
For me personally they’d be third after Zep and the Stones. Not that that’s a bad thing in the least.
I’m truly impressed at how great a band Queen was live. I can’t think of any group that has put on a better live show. The Rolling Stones had some great studio albums, but they aren’t very good live. My favorite band, Genesis, plays their songs live almost identical to the studio versions. Queen played songs that I didn’t like on the studio version and makes me love the live version.
Hmmm… no.
I have a huge soft spot for Queen - they’re the band that got me into rock when I first heard Bohemian Rhapsody aged 11, and that led me to metal, which led me to the freestylin’ damn hippy lifestyle I have today :), but I’d put them in my top 5 rather than the ‘best of all time’.
Still cried bucketloads when Freddie Mercury died though…
I’m sitting here, enjoying the Flash Gordon soundtrack, aaaand…I’m not so sure.
That they’re overrated, or that others are better? 
Ummm… Whaaaa? I LOVES me some EoDM but never once have I listened to them and thought “Queen 2.0”.
As for the OP - meh. Here’s the problem for me: Queen has maybe 6-10 GOOD songs, and half of those are so ridiculously overplayed that I can’t listen to them anymore. They are an excellent band, and I certainly think Freddie Mercury has the inside track on best rock vocalist of all time. But best rock band of all time? No way.
a) Queen is not the best rock band of all time. Let’s get that out of the way first.
b) They have nevertheless been spectacularly good, especially at the junction of hard rock & choral harmony.
c) The most underrated Queen song is “The Prophet’s Song” from A Night at the Opera
I’d question if someone who could limit Queen’s “good” songs to 6-10 has more than a passing familiarity with, well, those 6-10 songs.
In my library I have 56 songs by Queen. There are maybe 10 dupes or reissues (ie “The Show Must Go On (Feat. Elton John)”), so lets say a nice even 45 Queen songs. Here’s my list of “good” songs:
Bohemian Rhapsody
Crazy Little Thing Called Love
Killer Queen
I Want to be Free
Under Pressure
We Will Rock You
Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy
We Are the Champions
That’s 8. What am I missing?
Well, by deselecting all the live and greatest hits type titles, I’m left with 193 songs. Totally unscientific count, but substantially more than 56. It’s quite possible–I’ll go so far as to say probable–that the other 75% of those include songs that even you would consider “good.”
Not that you have to immerse yourself in fandom in order to express an opinion; only that, before you’d go so far as to dismiss ~185 of their songs, you should probably familiarize yourself with them. I get that you only know of 8 Queen songs that you like, but that in no way means that that’s all they ever accomplished. Is all.
Well first of all I would argue that the cream would rise to the top. Songs that appear on b-sides/rarities/crap we found on masters after the band passed out in a drug induced haze rarely are superior to standard tracks on standard albums. So while my 56 songs may not represent all of their work, it represents the work that the Queen engine decided to bubble up to get me to get them. Odds are they are most of their better songs.
Also, when I mean GOOD, I mean a song that even if you played it to someone who wasn’t the biggest fan of Queen in the world, even THEY would say it was a good song. If you can posit songs that aren’t on my list, I will gladly check them out.
hold on
fyi I’m giving post-hoc credit to “Somebody To Love” which I didn’ think much of until I relistened to it just now. So we are up to 9 by my count.
To answer your question, re: what are you missing? Here are most of my favorite Queen songs (numbered simply for a count, not a ranking):
[ol]
[li]‘39[/li][li]Action this day[/li][li]All dead, all dead[/li][li]Another One Bites The Dust[/li][li]Back chat[/li][li]Bicycle Race[/li][li]Body Language[/li][li]Bohemian Rhapsody[/li][li]Brighton rock[/li][li]Bring back that leroy brown[/li][li]Cool cat[/li][li]Crazy little thing called love[/li][li]Dancer[/li][li]Death on two legs[/li][li]Don’t try suicide[/li][li]Dragon attack[/li][li]Fat Bottomed Girls[/li][li]Fight from the inside[/li][li]Flash’s theme[/li][li]Flick of the wrist[/li][li]Get down ,make love[/li][li]Gimme Some Lovin’[/li][li]Good company[/li][li]Hammer To Fall[/li][li]I’m In Love With My Car[/li][li]In The Lap Of The Gods[/li][li]Keep Yourself Alive[/li][li]Killer Queen[/li][li]Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon[/li][li]Liar[/li][li]Lily of the vally[/li][li]Love Of My Life[/li][li]Mad the Swine[/li][li]Mustapha[/li][li]Ogre battle[/li][li]Play the Game[/li][li]Procession[/li][li]Sail away sweet sister[/li][li]Seaside rendezvous[/li][li]Seven Seas Of Rhye[/li][li]Sheer heart attack[/li][li]Sleeping on the sidewalk[/li][li]Somebody To Love[/li][li]Staying power[/li][li]Stone Cold Crazy[/li][li]Sweet lady[/li][li]Tenement funster[/li][li]The march of the black queen[/li][li]The Prophet’s Song[/li][li]Tie Your Mother Down[/li][/ol]
There’s a lot here I don’t have so it will take me a little bit to comment. Here’s my two quick thoughts:
Play the Game is a good song. Don’t know how that one fell through the cracks.
Bicycle Race is awful. Terrible.
Fat Bottomed Girls is a classic too, dunno how I missed that. Gonna have to check my computer for rollbacks! =D
OK, I revise my original statement from “6-10” to “10-15”. I still think my original point stands.
Ah. Well see I think Queen’s greatest strength is (was) their inventiveness; originality. So I a lot of my favorite songs are pretty unique. Like Bicycle Race. If that’s not interesting to you, then yeah, they won’t be your favorite.