Celebrating Freddie: The Soundtrack to My Life in 5 Queen Songs

Happy birthday, Freddie Mercury! It’s never the wrong time to play a Queen song.

An ode to Queen front man Freddie Mercury on his 70th birth anniversary

I’m either drunk or about to get drunk when I listen to a Queen song. Freddie Mercury’s vocals strike a chord (warning: bad pun in progress) with my heightened sensibilities, plus every time the DJ amps up the volume to ‘are you crazy’ levels, it’s as if my life has flashed before me…past present and future. Nothing like Mr Mercury belting out his hits to a packed room full of strangers suddenly discovering they are wannabe cool just like the guy holding up his rum and coke sloshing it about while mouthing the words to We Will Rock You.

Like that wise guy Dick Clark once said,

Music is the soundtrack of our lives

And if mine were a Queen song, here’s how things would roll.

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide,
No escape from reality-
Bohemian Rhapsody

Yeah like those Instagram posts, I’d love to edit out the bad bits and present the pretty picture, except bad things happen all the time. Traffic jams, EMIs and the existential crisis of “Do I really need that kidney” by the end of every month.

Another one bites the dust
Another one bites the dust
And another one gone,
And another one gone
Another one bites the dust
Hey, I’m gonna get you, too-
Another One Bites the Dust

I lost a friend this year. I knew it would happen. Eventually. Like maybe one day, when he was 50. But alcohol and a being bit blind-sided from staring at the abyss for too long ended in him being plugged to a ventilator. So this is it. I’m suddenly losing my people. This isn’t someone’s granddad you can make sympathetic sounds for by way of paying condolences. There’s death and then there’s marriage. I seem to be losing friends to both.

Oh you gonna take me home tonight
Oh down beside that red fire light
Oh you gonna let it all hang out
Fat bottomed girls you make the rocking world go round-
Fat Bottomed Girls

Face it like a woman. You’ve been body-shamed. I’ve been body-shamed. Sometimes its cloaked in a piece of well meaning advice, most times in your mother’s rants, others as a ‘yo mama so fat’ joke. Listen to Freddie ladies, the man was gay but he sang about that fat bottomed girl who rocked his world. God bless her soul.

But it’s been no bed of roses,
No pleasure cruise.
I consider it a challenge before the whole human race
And I ain’t gonna lose- We Are The Champions

In the odd fit of megalomania, and those self help memes telling you you’re the bees knees, this one’s an odd to my inner cockroach and its subtext. Survive. Not matter what.

She’s a Killer Queen Gunpowder,
Gelatine Dynamite with a laser beam- Killer Queen

And this ladies, gents and f*ckbwoys, this is what I’d like my epitaph to read. Ready Freddie?