Credit: Far Out / Denis Pellerin
Thu 12 February 2026 15:00, UK
It’s nearly impossible to accurately describe what Queen could do every single time they got onstage.
Even though they may have been one of the greatest rock and roll acts to hit the stage, their music wasn’t meant to stay in one spot for too long when they walked into the studio. They were willing to follow trends and even go in some wacky directions here and there, but Brian May knew that anything that they came out with was bound to have that signature sheen to it whenever they released a record.
Which really shouldn’t have been possible, knowing how many directions they go in. If you were to listen to ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ back in the day, you wouldn’t have necessarily seen a song like ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, and even when they scaled the upper echelons of rock and roll grandeur, seeing them turn ‘We Will Rock You’ into the greatest singalong in the world or go into R&B territory on ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ was more than a little bit strange. There wasn’t any one genre they were put into, but they still managed to sound like Queen even when Mercury wasn’t singing.
But if there is one thing that they were better at than anybody else, it was pure camp. They had the ability to turn every one of their songs into a jaunty good time if the time called for it, and while a record like A Night at the Opera has some of the finest pop tunes that they would ever make, songs like ‘Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon’ or ‘Seaside Rendezvous’ was the perfect counterbalance to something like ‘Love of My Life’ or ‘Death on Two Legs’.
So if there’s a band that can go in that many directions, what the hell would be their “definitive” song? Most people would have easily gone to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, but it’s not like all of their tunes were operatic masterpieces like that. They were ambitious, to be sure, but they weren’t going to keep making the even greater prog-adjacent rock and roll tunes for the rest of their lives, either.
Then again, they weren’t going to be known for ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ more than anything, either. It’s one of their biggest hits, and the bassline is one of the most infectious melodies in rock and roll history, but anyone looking for them to embrace their inner funk was bound to be in for a surprise when they picked up The Game and got tunes like ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ and ‘Play the Game’.
If you were to ask May himself, though, ‘The Millionaire Waltz’ is everything that Queen was supposed to be in their prime, saying, “There’s a song called ‘Millionaire Waltz,’ on A Day at the Races, which actually would sum up most of what we were about. But it’s something that’s very seldom played. It’s so incredibly complex that it doesn’t program on the radio, I suppose. But, boy, there’s some stuff in there.”
But maybe there’s a reason why they never played the song that much. There might not be the same kind of overlapping voices that you heard on ‘Rhapsody’ or anything, but no instrument really has the time to take a breath, from the strange piano opening to John Deacon’s insane chops on the bass to the offbeat rhythm that goes throughout the rest of the tune.
You’re not going to see too many bar bands covering the song, but even if Queen themselves never gave the song the time of day live, ‘The Millionaire Waltz’ is more of a testament to the kind of inventors that they could be in the studio. It doesn’t necessarily feature the highest vocals Mercury ever hit or a face-melting guitar solo, but if the rest of their material came to life onstage, this was a snapshot of what the band could sound like when they were operating at the peak of their powers behind the glass.