![\"Queen](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Queen-The-Works-1984-Far-Out-Magazine-F-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ Queen Productions)<\/p>\n
Mon 17 November 2025 20:00, UK <\/p>\n
There is perhaps nothing in this world quite as subjective as humour. For proof, go to any comedy show or head to the cinema to see any funny film. What you\u2019ll witness is exactly the dilemma Queen<\/a> kept running into \u2013 what\u2019s funny to one person will go completely over the head of someone else.<\/p>\n Allow me to exemplify this with an anecdote. Earlier this year, I went to my local cinema to see Andrew DeYoung\u2019s debut feature film, Friendship. Its lead star is Saturday Night Live\u2019s Tim Robinson, so you know it\u2019s going to be funny, but funny in a very specific way that toes the line between slapstick and painstakingly cringe.\u00a0<\/p>\n Me? I giggled a bit. Next to me, a woman didn\u2019t laugh once throughout the whole hour and a half. But two seats down from us, a man was absolutely cackling. His laughter was reverberating around the room. Three different reactions, all born from different backgrounds, that make for different ideas about what in this world is funny, and what isn\u2019t.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s why comedy writing is known as the hardest kind, and why trying to put humour into a song is something artists are often warned off.<\/a> It always hits on the same issue, where the listeners are divided, and the musicians have to accept that while some will get it, others simply will not.<\/p>\n Overwhelmingly, though, Brian May and his band found that people rarely seemed to get it when they put a laugh into their world, or dipped their toes into the world of irony. It\u2019s always frustrating, making you want to grab someone by the shoulders and shake them until they realise the joke, or loosen them up until they stop taking everything so seriously. However, the death of the author denies that \u2013 once a song is out in the world, it\u2019s out of a band\u2019s control.\u00a0<\/p>\n For Queen, that song was \u2018Keep Yourself Alive\u2019. To them, the titular statement was a joke. It was an ironic take on the idea of individual responsibility amidst an ever-maddening world, or even a sarcastic riff about how, in an unfair world, it\u2019s easy enough for the privileged to say something as useless as \u201cKeep yourself alive!\u201d<\/p>\n Mercury is getting at that as he sings, cheering in the chorus, \u201cKeep yourself alive \/ Ooh, it\u2019ll take you all your time and money \/ Honey you\u2019ll survive,\u201d taking a shot at how you can buy your way into a good life and the rest can merely scrape through.<\/p>\n \u201cRight from the beginning, \u2018Keep Yourself Alive\u2019 was meant to be ironic\u2014like, if keeping yourself alive is all there is to life, maybe there isn\u2019t much point,\u201d Brian May said, but it just didn\u2019t register, \u201cit was taken as, \u2018Hey, keep yourself alive!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n It was an issue they stumbled into a lot as the band loved adding some wit and a joking nudge into their tracks, but listeners always seemed to take everything so sincerely. \u2018Radio Ga Ga\u2019 got the same treatment<\/a> as May explained, \u201cWe used the old Fritz Lang film Metropolis in the video, where they\u2019re all being martial, all doing the same thing, and the words are about things getting too structured and people losing their individuality. But unfortunately, not everybody gets it,\u201d feeling the meaning of his song slip away when everyone is merely clapping on beat to a song they think is about the radio playing hit tunes.<\/p>\n![\"Queen](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Queen-Brian-May-Freddie-Mercury-1977-Far-Out-Magazine-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/a>Brian May and Freddie Mercury in 1977. (Credits: Far Out \/ Carl Lender)<\/p>\n