Review Summary: "We are the Champions/ My friends"
When I was a little kid, I recollect some of the first songs I ever enjoyed. Some of them were just silly songs that were on Sesame Street or wherever television packaged and shipped me, but some of them came from classic rock bands like The Beatles and so forth. One of them was Queen’s We Will Rock You. Sure, I heard it on an ad for a movie (The Flintstones movie in fact!), but it was an amazing feeling getting music on the brain for the first time. It wouldn’t get out of my head for weeks, and I would just hum it on my way to school during those times. Years later, I am reminded of Queen once again by the television and the radio, and I just had to get into the album that had the song that gave me my first insight on music; Queen’s
News of the World.
To see Queen for who they are, we must look back at the past of the album: it was released in the year 1977, on the day of October 28, and it was originally given a mixed response by critics for the ditching of progressive elements in their music and the much heavier reliance on poppy hooks, but years later those same critics would consider it a milestone in rock music. The album starts off with a bang with two of Queen’s biggest songs: “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions”, two very different yet similar songs. “We Will Rock You” is a fist pounding rock anthem at its absolute finest. Just about everything about the song is just amazing; the arena-like stomps and claps, the so-cheesy-nowadays-it-was-awesome-when-Queen-did-it gang vocals, even Brian May’s excellent guitar solo. No doubt about it, “We Will Rock You” is the standard for rock anthems today, and so far no young punks have ever been able to even wave a finger towards it.
This brings me to “We Are the Champions”. The song was Queen’s idea of a power ballad, and much like “We Will Rock You”, sets a high bar for its perspective song type. The song starts with some blissful piano playing while singer/drama Queen Freddie Mercury sings “I've paid my dues/Time after time/I've done my sentence/But committed no crime”, but from there, the song builds up into an epic chorus. The chorus is where the song reaches its absolute height. “We Are the Champions/My friends!” sing in voice that only vocal gods could posses, and ironically in the same chorus, Freddie also sings a godly falsetto while singing “And we’ll, keep on fighting/ to the end”. If there are any truly distinctive differences between “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions”, it’s that “We Will Rock You” is focused around the band, whereas “We Are the Champions” is surrounded by Freddie Mercury’s excellent voice, and both come out to be amazing.
So with a huge history and discussion, one would wonder how the other songs on the album are. Well, while they don’t match up to the first songs, they do at times reach their heights. “All Dead All Dead” is a story about Brian May’s experience after the death of his childhood cat, while the song also shows of much of why Mercury wasn’t the only great vocalist in Queen. That and his melancholic piano playing throughout the song make the song one of the highlights of the album. “Fight from the Inside” is one of Queen’s heavier songs, and like “We Will Rock You”, takes a jab at younger punks trying to take a lead role. “Sleeping on The Sidewalk” borrows from the blues scale, and breaths new Queen lively hood into the blues.
But this also leads me to the bad songs on this album, and unfortunately, they can be very bad. “Sheer Heart Attack” is a sheer headache to listen to, and any good guitar riffing that Brian May does manage to put out is swiftly destroyed by Freddie Mercury’s *** for brains delivery and ultimately May’s experimentation with the pedal effects to make jumbled noise. Another song on the album that’s a real downer is “Get Down Make Love”, which has Mercury sounding like the first hair metal singer before hair metal was invented, while the band just consistently wanks along in tedious fashion, only playing on the 4th beat each time except on the chorus, which sounds exactly like what 80s glam metal would have sounded like if it was done by Queen.
Despite some minor flaws on this record and other Queen records alike, the band still manages to get airplay and mention every day. Was it the backing band, whose were a hell of a group indeed, or was it their amazing vocalist Freddie Mercury with range bar none. The obvious answer to that question from the unenlightened Queen fan would be B. Freddie Mercury, but my answer was C. all of the above. The reason for that is that, without the band, we couldn’t have songs like “We Will Rock You”, which, well, rock. At the same token, we can’t have Queen without Freddie Mercury, he brings light to songs like “We Are the Champions”, and he makes them truly great. The fact is that they work together to form among the best musical partnerships of the 70s, and
News of The World is more than proof.
Recommended Songs
“We Are the Champions”
“We Will Rock You”
“All Dead All Dead”
“Sleeping On the Sidewalk”
“Fight From the Inside”
