Rock and RhapsodiesPub Date : 2021-09-09DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197526736.003.0008
Nick Braae
{"title":"The Musical World(s) of Queen","authors":"Nick Braae","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197526736.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197526736.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter begins from the premise that’s Queen idiolect or ‘sound’ was distinct in popular music. Using the concept of ‘style planets’, the idiolect characteristics are connected to numerous and varied stylistic sources including 1970s hard rock, 1970s Baroque pop, 1960s pop, soul, and pre-WWII American popular song. These influences are identified in the textural structures, performance gestures, and harmonic choices. Using the concept of ‘musical worlding’, it is suggested that a hypothetical listener might regard Queen’s idiolect as predominantly placed within the world of hard rock, but made to sound distinct and unique because of the integration of seemingly incongruous style influences within their songs. This analysis is conducted with primary reference to ‘We Are the Champions’","PeriodicalId":410569,"journal":{"name":"Rock and Rhapsodies","volume":"91 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122329238","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Rock and RhapsodiesPub Date : 2021-09-09DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197526736.003.0003
Nick Braae
{"title":"Artistic Craft and Crafted Artistry","authors":"Nick Braae","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197526736.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197526736.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter presents three common strategies that account for the structures of Queen’s songs: conventional templates (such as AABA or Verse-Chorus), conventional templates with added material (such as Verse-Chorus with two bridge sections), and episodic (irregular sequence of multiple sections). These types of forms appear in relatively equal measure and with relative consistency across Queen’s output. Beyond these strategies, it is argued that Queen’s approach to form may be understood as balancing ‘artistic’ and ‘craft’ techniques, drawing on Covach’s analysis of The Beatles. Songs with simple structures are often imbued with modulations or other rich harmonic devices; songs with more complex structures still retain a strong sense of tonal security and phrase regularity. Queen is thus positioned in the middle of pop and progressive compositional aesthetics from the 1970s.","PeriodicalId":410569,"journal":{"name":"Rock and Rhapsodies","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115320043","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Rock and RhapsodiesPub Date : 2021-09-09DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197526736.003.0004
Nick Braae
{"title":"Temporal Processes in Queen’s Large-Scale Songs","authors":"Nick Braae","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197526736.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197526736.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Many of Queen’s episodic songs from the 1970s present unique structural templates, ranging from compound to through-composed forms, to irregular patterns of repetition. This chapter seeks to identify underlying principles across these diverse formal plans, using the concept of musical time—the nature of successive musical events across a song. It is argued that Queen’s large-scale songs tend to present multiple temporal states across different spans of the song. At a local level, phrases tend to be highly goal-directed; at sectional levels, the sense of goal orientation is weakened, while retaining the impression of musical momentum. At the ends of songs, there is often some form of reprise or musical arrival, which is undercut by gestures that resist the attainment of closure. Queen’s large-scale songs thus feel like an ongoing and continuous musical journey, often into unpredictable territory, and one which comes to a temporary halt, rather than a complete end.","PeriodicalId":410569,"journal":{"name":"Rock and Rhapsodies","volume":"7 12","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"113989767","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Rock and RhapsodiesPub Date : 2021-09-09DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197526736.003.0002
Nick Braae
{"title":"Queen’s Idiolect","authors":"Nick Braae","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197526736.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197526736.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter documents the key characteristics of Queen’s idiolect as pertaining to harmonic gestures and structure, textural layers and the sound-box, and arrangement gestures. It is argued that the harmonic structures of Queen’s songs are defined through their consistent movement between tonic and dominant chords, which is embellished through rich chromatic gestures. The textures of Queen’s songs sit in one of five archetypal combinations involving piano, electric guitars, bass guitar, and drums, which are enhanced through vocals, lead guitars, synthesisers, and non-rock instruments. Queen’s sound-box structures are timbrally balanced and often present some form of dynamic movement of sounds in a virtual space. The different idiolect traits allow one to understand most of Queen’s songs either in terms of articulating a common compositional strategy (akin to a form of musical logic) or presenting sonic patterns that are like musical fingerprints.","PeriodicalId":410569,"journal":{"name":"Rock and Rhapsodies","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128174672","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Rock and RhapsodiesPub Date : 2021-09-09DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197526736.003.0010
Nick Braae
{"title":"Was It All Worth It? Queen in the 1980s","authors":"Nick Braae","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197526736.003.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197526736.003.0010","url":null,"abstract":"Queen’s albums in the 1980s were received with mixed reactions by critics, and such reactions present a clear historiographical narrative: a downturn with Hot Space, followed by a return to mediocre hard rock from The Works onwards. This chapter considers how the themes of these receptions relate to musical details. It is argued that the disparaging of Hot Space rests on Queen altering the instrumental structures of their songs compared with their idiolect of the previous decade. By comparison, the later albums return to this sound-world, but with repetitive harmonic and rhythmic formulae, such that there is a lack of variety in the newer hard rock songs. The chapter closes with a reading of the 1989 track ‘Was It All Worth It?’ which aims to emulate a ‘classic’ Queen song from the 1970s, but appears jumbled and structurally incoherent, an apt metaphor for the band in the 1980s.","PeriodicalId":410569,"journal":{"name":"Rock and Rhapsodies","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127384602","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Rock and RhapsodiesPub Date : 2021-09-09DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197526736.003.0009
Nick Braae
{"title":"A Day at the Races and the Gestural Unity of Queen","authors":"Nick Braae","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197526736.003.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197526736.003.0009","url":null,"abstract":"One of the key themes in popular music historiography is the notion that artists should develop through their career. This chapter considers A Day at the Races, the album to emerge after the commercial success of A Night at the Opera, but critically considered a weak follow-up. It is argued that one of the features of A Day at the Races is gestural unity—the imitation of musical gestures among the band members. Drawing on two extended case studies, it suggests the 1976 album treads familiar ground to its predecessor but does so with comparatively unified arrangements and extended motivic development within the songs, an observation that can be understood as representing Queen’s evolution.","PeriodicalId":410569,"journal":{"name":"Rock and Rhapsodies","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125371974","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Rock and RhapsodiesPub Date : 2021-09-09DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197526736.003.0007
Nick Braae
{"title":"Hard Rock, Glam Rock, and Progressive Rock in the 1970s","authors":"Nick Braae","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197526736.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197526736.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter places Queen within the network of the principal rock labels of the 1970s. Extending the work of classical and popular music analysts, a distinction is drawn between style and genre, as pertaining to replicated musical patterns and the cultural meanings afforded by such patterns, respectively. With this distinction in place, Queen’s 1970s outputs are analysed in relation to the style and genre conventions of hard rock, glam rock, and progressive rock. It is demonstrated that the band engaged the style conventions of the former and latter labels, but were positioned closer to glam rock in genre terms. This is evident through their subversive exaggerated articulation of hard and progressive rock style traits, with ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ encapsulating this relationship.","PeriodicalId":410569,"journal":{"name":"Rock and Rhapsodies","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128289701","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Freddie Mercury","authors":"Nick Braae","doi":"10.7560/320631","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/320631","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter analyses and interprets the singing of Freddie Mercury. It is argued that the singer utilised four predominant voice types—powerful, gritty, sincere, exaggerated—which were defined by combinations of vocal techniques. These voice types often aligned with stylistic contexts but were also utilised to emphasise the structural dynamics of songs, such as moving from a lighter tone (e.g. sincere) to a powerful tone at the onset of a pre-chorus. Furthermore, Mercury’s deployment of these voice types in incongruous stylistic contexts (e.g. a breathy tone in a hard rock song), along with the ambiguity as to whether he possessed a ‘true’ voice, may be read as queer vocal strategies that challenge heteronormative conventions of male rock singing. It is argued that his vocal aesthetic was influenced by Liza Minnelli and Marilyn Monroe—theatrical voices—which underscores his ability to present a distinct performance identity.","PeriodicalId":410569,"journal":{"name":"Rock and Rhapsodies","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129710172","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Rock and RhapsodiesPub Date : 2021-09-09DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197526736.003.0011
Nick Braae
{"title":"Queen’s Jubilee","authors":"Nick Braae","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197526736.003.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197526736.003.0011","url":null,"abstract":"Queen’s final album before Mercury’s death was widely viewed as a return to Queen’s distinct style, and also includes a number of reflective lyrics that were likely written with knowledge of the singer’s ill health. It is demonstrated how the title track embodies the idiolect principles of Queen’s 1970s output in terms of exploring new stylistic ground, while staying rooted in the familiar textural and arrangement patterns. Drawing on Said and Straus, Innuendo can be viewed as reflecting a ‘late style’ for Queen, but one that is defined by a retreat to a past musical style of their own, in contrast to other conceptions of this aesthetic defined in relation to classical composers.","PeriodicalId":410569,"journal":{"name":"Rock and Rhapsodies","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127412388","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Rock and RhapsodiesPub Date : 2021-09-09DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197526736.003.0005
Nick Braae
{"title":"Brian May and Roger Taylor","authors":"Nick Braae","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197526736.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197526736.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter analyses the vocal techniques of Brian May and Roger Taylor in their limited roles as lead singers of Queen. May’s distinct techniques revolve around imprecise pitching inflections, variable vibrato, and a thinner tone in the upper register, all of which connote a sense of untrained naturalness. Taylor’s singing is marked by a wide vibrato, frequent use of vocal distortion, and rhythmic delivery that does not conform to the metrical grid. His singing style is one that connotes improvisation and performance freedom. It is argued that the two singers’ approaches align well with strands of rock authenticity as established by Allan Moore—May with folk-rock singers, such as Dylan or Springsteen; Taylor with hard rock and blues-derived singers, such as Plant or Hendrix.","PeriodicalId":410569,"journal":{"name":"Rock and Rhapsodies","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130104937","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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