Sunday, 15 November 2015

Music of the Abstract: I'm Going Slightly Mad by Queen



Out of all the hits and well known songs in their canon, enough to fill three compilations, I've always had this as my favourite Queen song. Part of it is the darkness of the lyrics knowing that after the album this comes off, Innuendo (1991), Freddie Mercury would die of an AID effected illness in what was and still is seen as a tragedy, knowing that he could've been making music still to this day. Yet I'm Going Slightly Mad, especially seeing the music video above with the song, is hilarious at the same time, a darken humour that's very droll, a very English sense of wit. The disorientated, almost backward played, guitar solo in the middle reminds me of a very trippy song back from the Sixties.

It shouldn't be strange that Queen should appear in this article as, even as they hit the mainstream, there was still an unpredictability to them, a willingness to bring a variety of genres together into a single album let alone over a span of them. Bohemian Rhapsody, their most famous song, isn't exactly a conventional three minute pop song, a rock opera with an a cappella in the centre of the track that is as indulgent as you can get and loved for that reason. Even on Innuendo itself, while with more conventional hard rock and pop songs in comparison to other albums, there's still a flamenco guitar passage in the title track and another song about Freddie Mercury's beloved cat amongst them. 

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