Credit: Spotify
November 11th, 2026 · 1:00am GMT
For a band that has a monarch in their name, Queen was always more of a democracy than anything else.
They had a great deal of respect for what everyone brought to the table, and just because Freddie Mercury was at the lip of the stage soaking in applause didn’t mean that the rest of the band didn’t have some great moments in their arsenal as well. It took all of them to turn them into superstars, but sometimes the greatest songs can come from where you least expect them.
And when you listen to the first few Queen albums, you can hear their more eclectic side coming out a lot more often. The band are already known as one of the biggest rock and roll bands of all time, but for all of the pop songs that they could make, a lot of the tunes on their first records were closer to progressive rock, complete with multiple movements and riffs that could stop on a dime and transition into something completely different, like on ‘March of the Black Queen’.
Then again, being in one style wasn’t what Mercury wanted out of the band. He liked the idea of switching things around, and while he could be one of the most emotional songwriters of his generation when he wanted to be, it took Brian May and Roger Taylor to give their songs a kick in the ass. There were too many people doing the same glam look, but May usually helped give their songs a lot more guts behind the scenes.
He and Taylor were rockers at heart, but their music was already beginning to change by the time that they finished A Night at the Opera. ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ felt like less of a song and more of a culmination of where they had been over the past few years, so once they made one of the best albums that they could have ever made, it was only natural for them to start seeing what else was out there.
So many other bands would have probably changed their sound in the face of genres like punk, but Queen were going to double down and make something even poppier. And with the disco craze slowly gaining steam, the band could have their one moment to become superstars by making pop tunes, and right when they were set to reach their biggest song of all time, no one would have guessed that the quietest member of the band would have been the one to pull it off.
John Deacon was the last person that most people were interested in talking about whenever he performed, but his songs were always what turned people’s heads. Mercury had always felt that Deacon’s heart was in genres like Motown, and while he loved singing along to ballads like ‘You’re My Best Friend’, hearing the bassline to ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ made everyone turn their heads immediately when they heard it in the studio.
Further reading: From The Vault
Or at least it turned Michael Jackson’s head when he visited them in the studio. ‘The King of Pop’ was already turning into one of the biggest superstars of his era, and once he convinced the rest of the band that the song was going to be a hit, it became one of the biggest songs that Queen ever made, being equal parts disco, funk, and rock and roll, especially when Mercury came in after the breakdown with one of the coolest vocal runs that he ever hit throughout his career.
Bringing opera to the masses was only one facet of the band’s career, and it turned out that when they actually pushed themselves into pop territory, they walked away with more swagger than just about anybody whenever they leaned into the groove. They eventually leaned into it a bit too much on Hot Space, but for the time being, there was no one else who could touch Deacon’s bassline circa 1980.
