{"id":75067,"date":"2025-10-15T00:32:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T00:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/75067\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T00:32:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T00:32:10","slug":"its-light-hearted-sexually-ambiguous-i-love-it-justin-hawkins-picks-the-10-queen-songs-you-might-have-missed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/75067\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cIt\u2019s light-hearted, sexually ambiguous \u2013 I love it!\u201d Justin Hawkins picks the 10 Queen songs you might have missed"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s easy to choose Queen<\/a>\u2019s 10 best songs, innit? For starters, there’s an album: Queen’s Greatest Hits<\/a>, the biggest-selling album of all time in the UK. But if you want to know what Queen quonnoisseurs really consider the greatest tracks, you need a person who lives and breathes their music, who has the band\u2019s portraits inked into their knuckles and is possibly more partial to a catsuit than Fred himself.<\/p>\n

Step forward, Justin Hawkins. We asked The Darkness<\/a> frontman, YouTube star<\/a> and Yungblud nemesis<\/a> to avoid the most obvious tracks \u2013 the result is a list of some of the deepest cuts from their back catalogue.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Take it away, Mr H\u2026<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

Dancer (Hot Space, 1982)<\/p>\n

“Hot Space<\/a> is a misunderstood album, really. It\u2019s kind of dismissed as the disco album and people don\u2019t like it because it\u2019s a departure, but there are some moments on there that are really fantastic. There\u2019s a brilliant guitar solo on Dancer, which I think is kind of Queen\u2019s The Stroke \u2013 you know, the Billy Squier<\/a> song. That\u2019s Queen\u2019s version of that. It\u2019s the same producer, and there are lots of elements that are quite similar. It\u2019s got a brilliant chorus, a great guitar solo, and it\u2019s a great song to work out to.”<\/p>\n

The Kiss (Aura Resurrects Flash) (Flash Gordon, 1980)\u00a0<\/p>\n

“This is a beautiful, John Barry-esque instrumental piece with some really, really high singing in it \u2013 the voice is used like a Theremin would be used in these sorts of arrangements. The whole soundtrack is really atmospheric and beautiful anyway, but The Kiss is the best moment for me.”<\/p>\n

Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy (A Day At The Races, 1976)<\/p>\n

“The vocal arrangement on this song sounds like nothing else any other rock band has done before. It\u2019s light-hearted, sexually ambiguous, and I just love it.”<\/p>\n

Queen – Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy – Lyrics – YouTube
\n\"Queen<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a>
\nMustapha (Jazz, 1978)\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The opening track on Jazz<\/a>. It sounds like Freddie\u2019s singing in Arabic at the start. But then perhaps he\u2019s not. It doesn\u2019t really matter either way; you can still sing along to it, and it\u2019s a great excuse for the band to demonstrate their spectacular dynamics. And just when you think it can\u2019t get any louder, it suddenly gets a lot louder, and that happens two or three times throughout the song \u2013 it\u2019s brilliant. It\u2019s a Roy Thomas Baker<\/a> production as well, and a great introduction to a really diverse album.”<\/p>\n

Sign up below to get the latest from Classic Rock, plus exclusive special offers, direct to your inbox!<\/p>\n

39 (A Night At The Opera, 1975)\u00a0<\/p>\n

“39 is a song that Brian May<\/a> sings, and it seems to be about time travel and World War One. There\u2019s some really strange science-fiction melodies to it, but then it\u2019s also straight folk with these really interesting twists. It\u2019s hard to pinpoint what it\u2019s really trying to say, but it\u2019s beguiling and I can\u2019t stop listening to it, still.”<\/p>\n

In The Lap Of The Gods (Sheer Heart Attack, 1974)<\/p>\n

“If I could choose the whole Sheer Heart Attack<\/a> album then I would, but if I had to pick one song it\u2019d be In The Lap Of The Gods \u2013 part one, I guess. It\u2019s interesting because it doesn\u2019t have a usual structure where you\u2019ve got like a verse and chorus, and they\u2019ve affected Freddie\u2019s vocals so that his voice appears much lower and doomier than it normally would. And after the chaotic, tempestuous intro there\u2019s this massive harmony on In The Lap Of The Gods in stereo that goes from in front, to the side, behind and back around you. Considering this was done in the mid-70s, it\u2019s amazing.”<\/p>\n

Queen – In The Lap Of The Gods (Official Lyric Video) – YouTube
\n\"Queen<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a>
\nIt’s Late (News Of The World, 1977)\u00a0<\/p>\n

“When we had the chance to play with Brian we were really hoping to play this song, but it\u2019s not one of the more known ones so I think there was a slight reluctance to go there. But I love this song. It\u2019s really long \u2013 there\u2019s loads of different movements in it, it\u2019s got a brilliant guitar solo that goes on for ages, and a huge drum fill, which all the best Queen songs should have. They produced that album themselves, so it\u2019s an impressive feat in that respect too.”<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

Dragon Attack (The Game, 1980)\u00a0<\/p>\n

“This was the album where I think they were experimenting with a different musical identity, and obviously it\u2019s when Freddie stopped wearing the lycra \u2013 on the front cover they\u2019re all wearing leather jackets. But if you look carefully, all the jackets are quite different, so even that\u2019s well observed. Dragon Attack has that amazing walking bass line and a really complicated drum pattern. It\u2019s my DJ set opener \u2013 it\u2019s an obscure song but a floor-filler, which tells you a lot about the groove.”<\/p>\n

It’s A Hard Life (The Works, 1984)\u00a0<\/p>\n

“This was from The Works<\/a> album and the video was directed by Tim Pope \u2013 it was probably the last time we saw Freddie in a cat suit. He was wearing that red one with all the eyeballs on it, and he had a great big giant mullet wig \u2013 a mega mullet if you like. It was super long, super high at the top, and it was just a really inspirational piece of work as both a song and as a video.”<\/p>\n

You Take My Breath Away (A Day At The Races, 1976)<\/p>\n

“The last one is really important and I\u2019ve just remembered what it should be. It\u2019s from A Day At The Races<\/a>. So much from that album is really good, but I have to choose You Take My Breath Away. I saw footage of Freddie doing it live first of all, and it was already really good, but when you hear the record it\u2019s got this amazing vocal arrangement at the top of it. Nobody else can do this, check this out [he precedes to play the intro on his phone]. That makes me cry every time I listen to it \u2013 apart from this time because I\u2019m being a man in front of Classic Rock.<\/p>\n

Queen – You Take My Breath Away (Official Lyric Video) – YouTube
\n\"Queen<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

The Darkness are on tour in Europe right now. Visit their website<\/a> for tour dates. Justin’s YouTube show Justin Hawkins Rides Again is also doing live shows next year<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It’s easy to choose Queen\u2019s 10 best songs, innit? For starters, there’s an album: Queen’s Greatest Hits, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75068,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,85,46,409],"class_list":["post-75067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}