And, of course, you were 2 years old when he died. I would suspect that many people your age and younger (unless they are particular fans of Queen or music from the 1970s and 1980s) wouldn’t be familiar with Mercury…and this is despite the fact that the band is probably a lot more culturally relevant / visible today than many of their contemporaries. A number of Queen songs have remained popular to this day (and get play in TV shows and movies), Brian May (Queen’s guitarist) and Roger Taylor (Queen’s drummer) have shown up on shows such as *American Idol *in recent years, and Lady Gaga took her stage name from a Queen song.
Me, personally? I became a Queen fan as a teenager (around 1979 or so), and have known who he was since then.
True, but Chefguy said if you’d listened to rock since the '70s you’d know him, and given (as you said) I was 2 when he died, I wouldn’t expect a modern person, even a rock fan, to know Mercury. Hell, the only reason I know him by name is probably because I read Cracked.
Well, according to the OP this was on Facebook. If it was in person it’d be different. I was more referring to the one who was saying “Lancia, you don’t listen to that crap, do you?” You usually want to confirm you’re correct before berating people.
I assumed that people just knew who he was, even if they didn’t grow up the 70’s or listen to Queen.
Similarly, I would assume most people know who Mick Jagger is, even if they don’t listen to the Rolling Stones, or they would know who who Kurt Cobain was, even if they couldn’t name name a single Nirvana hit.
Like Rock Hudson, Mercury’s death brought AIDS into the spotlight more than it already was. While I’m a big fan of Queen, I’ve seen his death and the circumstances around it referenced many times over the years and would know who he was even having never listened to Queen. I guess I have a hard time believing so few people know who he is, even on a peripheral level. Especially since Queen was active up until Mercury’s death, and the aforementioned FB posters are mostly in their 30’s – so Queen was still releasing popular albums while these people were in middle school. Admittedly, they were probably listening to Vanilla Ice and Kris Kross, but still.
Radio station at work is set to “THE ROCK” (classic rock) so we lucky drones get to hear Bohemian Rhapsody and Another One Bites The Dust at least twice a day. Under Pressure and
We Will Rock You about twice a week. Yeah, I wish I could change the channel.
Yes, they were still creating new music, and releasing albums, up until Freddie’s death. However, they were no longer the popular band in the U.S. that they had been in the 1970s and early 1980s. (I recently watched a documentary on the band, in which Brian May traces their “demise” in the U.S. to Americans not getting the cross-dressing in their 1984 video, “I Want To Break Free”.)
With the exception of the re-release of “Bohemian Rhapsody” in conjunction with its placement in the movie Wayne’s World in 1991, the last Queen single to crack the Top 40 in the U.S. was “Radio Ga Ga” in 1984.
Especially if your friends were listening to rap music as young people, they simply may never have heard a Queen song on the radio. (Though, there’s a certain irony in you specifically mentioning Vanilla Ice there…)
Of course I know who he is. I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s. I was working in radio the day he died. I remember reading about it as it came across the newsfeed. Not a surprise, but still sad. That being said, my 13 yo son knows who he is. The boy has been raised on a steady diet of rock and roll his whole life.
Again, I really think this is more a social niche thing than it is a generational thing. I was a kid in rural Nebraska when Queen was at their commercial height in the US. Everybody knew “Another One Bites the Dust.” When I’d mention Freddie Mercury, I’d get blank looks. Today, if I mention Freddie Mercury in my Nano-derived writing group, everyone knows who he is–and the median age in there is about 22. If I mentioned his name at work (at a conservative insurance company), I’m quite sure I’d get blank looks.
Then again, I couldn’t pick “The Situation” out of a lineup. C’est la merdre.