Despite being one of the most innovative and forward-thinking rock bands in music history, Queen has always suffered unnecessary scrutiny from peers and music fans alike. Despite their excessive achievements and reputation as the one band that, against all odds, changed the game forever, there’s no escaping the hateful observations of those who will never get it. But why?
To understand this, we must first look at why audiences turn their backs on bands in the first place. Usually, it’s because they threaten a space they regard as sacred, which is a particularly strong trend in rock spaces. For example, it’s usually the bands who remain loyal to their roots that maintain respect, even if it means shunning commercial growth in order to do so. Look at Metallica: loved by many until they became “sell-outs”, at which point there was no turning back.
But Queen never claimed to be one thing before veering off in another direction, which leads to another question: was it all because they brought an obvious taste of flamboyance to an otherwise gritty and subdued scene? In an arena that loves tradition, which begins in all the musical sensibilities that make the genre and extends to what it all represents, and manifested in the appearances and the way musicians hold themselves, was Queen too out there to be well-liked?
In other words, were they a little too much for others to swallow, a little too theatrical to be called the kind of “cool” rock that earned its place among names like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and The Who? We can sit here now and say yes, yes, of course Queen were ostracised because they were too this or too that, criticisms from the embittered rock loyalist who felt their beloved space was becoming too glam to be authentic, but was that the only thing that made people turn a blind eye to their music?
Why is Queen so hated?
Aside from the obvious reasons why people might have disliked Queen’s music—from it being too polished to too melodic to be considered rock—there are also countless undertones that placed the band in an endless cycle of prejudice from the get-go. For instance, everything Freddie Mercury did challenged the dominant white face of rock music at the time, as did his demeanour in interviews, which presented a man very much uninterested in entertaining false pretences.
But this attitude made some wrongly assume he was stoic or egotistical, earning him wrongful bias based on a subset of characteristics and mannerisms that went beyond the usual “they just don’t do it for me as a band”. In this case, it was also about how much Mercury and his band gave to the audience, which to some was too much to be considered dignified or conducive to a band that wanted a respectable reputation.
And, if it’s about overexposure in that sense, Queen were seemingly everywhere at one point, and for those who genuinely didn’t get anything from their music, it was overkill. Then again, that wasn’t exactly their fault. As Mercury told NME in 1977, “My lifestyle and this very precocious nature was blown out of all proportion. But the media created a lot more than I could give”.
And if it’s over-flamboyance that rubs people up the wrong way, Mercury always knew that those who understood it would always be there front row. “Can you imagine,” he said, “doing the sort of songs that we’ve written, like ‘Rhapsody’ or ‘Somebody to Love’, in jeans with absolutely no presentation?” It’s also the same interview when he quipped back at the journalist with the ultimate tester, “I hope that when you better yourself in your profession, you enjoy yourself too”.
So, there was always a delicacy there that came from being a frontman and, by extension, an entire collective of musical maestros who knew what they were doing wasn’t for anybody and charged head-first into everything they had to offer. It was all about enjoyment and ignoring the haters, even when they came after their sound, their appearance, their words said in interviews, like it all meant something that disregarded all they meant and their claim on a sturdy place in the bigger game of rock.
