(Credits: Queen Productions)
Sun 12 October 2025 20:00, UK
In some ways, being in a band is like scrolling on TikTok. Everything is middling. Eventually, your collaborators become your friends, and your friends all typically have a lot of the same opinions as you. What I’m getting at here is an echo chamber. It takes a Herculean effort to cook up your own equation to get to the perfect song, but once you’re there, it’s super easy to stick with it.
Most bands have struggled with this at one time or another. How do you better your sound and challenge yourself? How do you break out of the chains you’ve placed around your own neck that might have otherwise looked like a glittering silver necklace? Well, I can tell you how Queen did it.
Queen’s iconic guitarist Brian May discussed the arduous, challenging process behind some of their best work with Guitar Player, May was asked why the band decided to change things up when they were already working so well. In May fashion, he departed a gold nugget of wisdom.
He began, “We had this idea that we never should repeat ourselves, so we deliberately put ourselves in different situations of writing and recording just so we would keep moving and keep breaking down any barriers that might seem to be there.”
May turned to the song that helped them jump another hurdle on their race to success. He shared, “I felt another barrier was broken with ‘Another One Bites the Dust’, as well. To various degrees, sometimes we weren’t totally comfortable with it, and certainly Roger wasn’t very comfortable with that song.”
He added, “He didn’t want his drums to sound like that really, but the idea was supported by John and also by Freddie, who got brilliantly passionate about how we would have this very sparse, tight little sound for the drums and everything would be very spare.”
I can hear it even now, that recognisable bass speaking for itself, that “ah, ah, ah,” in the chorus, the breathy, powerful punch to command every ounce of your attention. But, of course, May’s right: the drums sound different from the usual Queen sound, like they’re playing out of the speaker of an iPhone 11.
It’s fitting that Freddie Mercury was the one to champion the unique addition. Though he’s no longer with us, in a world full of AI slop and run-of-the-mill sugary-sweet indie offerings, Freddie would always remain an outlier, an oddball. He’d either run a bizarre TikTok account ranking previously unheard samples from the 19th century, or he’d be offline altogether, choosing to fully immerse himself in the postmodern world. Both would make him feel uncomfortable. Both would lead, in one way or another, to a new, unique perspective.
We can take May’s message and run with it: breaking down barriers in art is important for continued and increasing levels of success. Take that to mean exploring a newly multi-media approach to art-making, or trying out a new effect on your drum machine, or fusing in a new genre altogether. After all, discomfort and greatness have the very same hiding place.
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