I dug Queen back in the day. They were the first rock concert I went to, if you don’t count the Fifth Dimension as “rock.” I was a big Bowie fan in the '70s too, though I never made it to a Bowie concert. But Bowie’s art just went so much deeper and more meaningful for me. Throughout the '70s, each new Bowie album was a complete accomplishment in a radically new direction from before, Low and Heroes being the ultimate reaches for me, though I’ll always remain a Ziggy fan. Lodger was full of great music that stands up well against anything else released the same year (1979), but seems like a decline only in comparison to the rest of Bowie’s '70s oeuvre, because it for once did not take a radical new direction.
I actually did not care for Let’s Dance—its sound was too cold and off-putting for me; even the abstract watercolory sound-sketches on side 2 of Heroes sounded warm and inviting by comparison— and from the mid-1980s onward, I tuned out of new developments in contemporary rock music and lost interest in the '80s versions of pretty much all my rock faves from the '70s, and followed Peter Gabriel’s lead to world music instead—but 1980’s Scary Monsters is just amazing in its scope and execution, one of the most outstanding rock albums ever.
If it were just Queen 2 compared to any single album of Bowie’s, well I think Queen 2 beats most albums ever made. But Bowie’s entire output stacked up against Queen’s entire output, up to say 1984 after which I quit paying attention to both of them, gives Bowie the clear edge. That, plus Bowie had John Lennon singing along on the Young Americans album. John Fucking Lennon! Queen never did that. And Bowie incidentally showed up in my favorite movie ever: Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me.
Bowie by a mile. Most casual Bowie fans only know his stuff that played on the radio. All his radio hits are the ones I usually skip while listening to a Bowie album.
Sit down with a good pair of headphones, close your eyes and listen to the song Station to Station. The layers of that song are just phenomenal.
His glam era, the Berlin trilogy of albums, all the way up until the 1.Outside album. After that, it goes downhill, but he had twenty-something great years.
Any musician worth a crap in my opinion usually states Bowie as a major influence.
I would take Roxy Music as a close second.
I do like Queen though. Some of their songs are beautiful. But I’m not a big fan of their hard rock stuff and they have a handful of cutsie types of songs I don’t care for.
Also, Freddie was a great singer and frontman, but that high falsetto you hear is not Freddie, it’s the drummer Roger Taylor. (“Beelzebub has a devil put aside for meeee, for meee, for MEEEEEEEE!!!”
That MEEEEEE is Roger. He’s an underrated singer for sure.
Purely personal preferences, I’d pick Queen. I never warmed to Bowie, and though I do like some of his work, I was never moved to buy any of his albums; I have three Queen albums, and I think “A Night at the Opera” is one of the greatest rock albums ever.
I think this is entirely correct, and a connection I hadn’t made before, and perhaps a subliminal reason I don’t like Queen very much. I just hate musical theater – the idea that whole communities will burst into song and dance is so utterly absurd to me that… well, it’s just too bizarre for me to comprehend. The only musical movie I ever enjoyed was All That Jazz, which made a kind of sense because the subject matter was making musicals, plus it had so many smoking hot scantily clad women.
Now you’re just being ridiculous. I get that they’re your favorite band, but The Beatles were leagues beyond Queen by just about any metric you’d care to use. I have my favorite bands, too, but I don’t con myself into believing they compare to The Beatles.
Also, for influence and depth of material, I’d say Bowie’s easily got Queen beat. And I voted Queen in this poll.
I’m wondering if Bowie had the support of his record company when he tried to bring out a record that was a different style to the previous one. I think in today’s industry he’d encounter quite a bit of resistance, but how did it work back then?
A coupe weeks back I was reading obits of Dave Brubeck. His record company didn’t want to release his album “Time Out” because they thought it was too… strange or something. It became one of the best selling jazz albums in history, and the single “Take Five” broke onto the pop charts and became perhaps the most recognizable jazz tune in history. I’d bet you’ve heard it, there’s a bunch of versions on Youtube if you want to check it out.
Anyway, this was in 1959.
(On edit) And by 1959, Brubeck was already arguably the best known jazz musician in America, having been on the cover of Time magazine several years previously.
Definitely Queen. If David Bowie were all he was trumped up to be, then he would have come out on top at the Alamo. Queen, however, has surpassed even Victoria’s time on the throne. You go, girl!
This, precisely. Queen is fun and all, but David Bowie also gave me a lot to think about, comfort during hard times, and the surprises that come with creativity.
I think it was something he had to fight for, and paid for with several periods in the wilderness at points in his career. Not all Bowie’s experiments were commercial successes, but I guess eventually he was a big enough star, and it became apparent that he was Bowie and he would be back.
Coming back around, I can’t help but ask: what if one group’s music were never to have been? I honestly can’t bring myself to wish Queen out of existence.
Queen never did that. And Bowie incidentally showed up in my favorite movie ever: Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me.