why did rock critics hate Queen so much in the 1970s/80s?

I share aero's love of the Carpenters. Not sure I wanna know what he means.

Lol xp

Maybe it's just the sports associations, but I've always heard the rhythm of "We Will Rock You" as stomping on bleachers.

And yes I am familiar w fascisms historical connection to paganism (peron kind of a funny exceptuon iirc)

we will we will shakey

new thread idea: comparing fascist subtexts in the carpenters' "top of the world" and queen's "we are the champions."

Aesthetics exist to be appropriated and used by anyone. Whether or not they are employed well or not is the issue. I find Queen's employment of them creepy and troublesome, both because of the response they invoke in the audience and the sort of nausea that comes with seeing something employed in the service of genocide and oppression repurposed as something to be blithely enjoyed and accepted as "fun" or "theater".

grandstanding, populist triumphalism seems far too broad a category to be summarily dismissed as "fascist aesthetics". the fact that fascists are/were attracted to heroic pomp not render it intrinsically fascist. as i see it, abstract things like a particular artistic approach can be meaningfully fascist only in function or intent. it's not like they were writing songs that specifically recall nazi marches, or that enlist the listener in any even quasi-fascist purpose. seems more sensible to criticize their cultivation of a self-satisfying grandeur. the sound is gluttonous, decadent. not fascist.

^ ...does not render it...

also, it seems weird to discuss queen's use of vainglorious, macho, vaguely military pomp without figuring certain other factors into the equation...

were rush called fascists?

of course -- look at their mustaches and Ayn Rands

@contenderizer I think what you were getting at was covered in this statement from above:

Do I need to point out there were gay nazis

i'm suggesting that gay aesthetics might be worth considering, not simply excusing apparent fascism by pointing out mercury's orientation

No, I'm in total agreement with you; I was trying to make a point and failed. When I see an image like this:

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/11/24/1322150712400/Freddie-Mercury-of-Queen-007.jpg

...it definitely complicates any fascist aesthetic attributed to Queen.

shakey do you like sparks?

is Οὖτις for fucking real itt or have I eaten mushrooms without knowing

I get it that sparks are queen's ur-text and I do love them. The irony and humor seem way more in the foreground w them. Not as bombastic either.

xp

I mean ffs the verse of We Will Rock You = "stomp, stomp, clap", not the 1-2 1-2 goosestep of an imposing fascist military ready to annex yr city.

fuck, what next, is the hand jive a Goebbels-ian Nazi recruitment tool?

this aggression must not stand. "Ogre Battle"? "Father to Son"? "You're My Best Friend?" for crying out loud? The longer I love Queen, the more incredible the early albums sound to me.

― Now I Am Become Dracula (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Saturday, May 17, 2014 11:46 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm and I'll raise you "Seven Seas of Rhye" (from Queen II, not the instrumental), "March of the Black Queen", and "Prophet's Song"

how come this is the only fuckin band that ever gets their pomp and grandeur called "fascistic" though? maybe maybe zeppelin gets it

Nonono -- Zep is Satanic.

Queen were infinitely better (or at least more interested in) understanding and responding to crowd dynamics / psychology. They knew how to make tens of thousands of people stomp their feet / cheer / pump their fists in unison and the songs that have subsequently been adopted as jock jams were clearly written to have this effect.

The criticisms may sound daft, and they maybe daft, but it's worth remembering that the context the writers were working in was different. There are 37 years between We Will Rock You and today, 32 between the song and the end of WW2. They didn't also have four decades of people doing the same thing to get used to it.

on the seemingly-settled question of influence, occurs to me that power metal as a genre owes a hell of a lot to queen

contenderizer, god bless you for this, which I think answers my thread question as good as anyone ever will:

I was also thinking about the "fascist" accusations. From the very beginning, Queen produced what i'm tempted to call triumphalist cheese. Their music seems to strive for this sense of soaring (yes) supremacy, proud and erect atop a mountain's peak, the wind flowing through our golden hair. The vibe is intrinsically collective, it invites us into a shared feeling: "Here, comrade. Stand with us atop this mountain in joyful unity. The view is incredible." The appollonian strain of prog often seem to reach for this, a sense of almost superhuman majesty in acheivement, optimistic, insistent on excellence, truly olympian - and Queen took that theme further than any of their peers.
I can see why some might see in this an echo of fascist triumphalism, especially when turned to singalong pop, but the key difference is that it isn't fascist. It's not dedicated to the eradication or suppression of anything. No group is damned or othered, no obedience enforced. I suppose it could conceivably be put to use by fascists, but that's true of a great many not-particularly-offensive things. Some people enjoy the feeling of minty-fresh athletic ecstacy invoked, while others don't. Iused to reject this sort of music on general principle, insisting on filth-dripping nihilist vulgarity, but I was never tempted to view Queen-style operatic grandeur as evil. I just thought it was sort of gross, too easy, lacking the violent thrill of negation.
― katsu kittens (contenderizer), Sunday, May 18, 2014 6:38 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Queen was definitely 'pop' on some level that the Beatles were and a lot of those bands kinda weren't
― some dude, Sunday, May 18, 2014 2:50 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM. as I note in first few posts, i appreciate them as a pop band. i mean, they are obviously also a rock band by any reasonable measure, but the qualities I most appreciate in them are mostly qualities that I associate with pop music. there's a concision combined w/ a density of hooks in their records that strikes me as very poppy. dense, that is, like a really fucking good cake. i don't mean that to disparage, or even to damn with faint praise. that's high praise. i love cake. would i want to subsist on it exclusively? of course not, but i can't think of anything i would want to subsist on exclusively. (which makes me wonder, is Muzak the Soylent© of music?)

finally, on "influence," where is mark s when you need him?

it's hard not to see homophobia here "these creeps and their polluting ideas"

― relentlessly pecking at peace (President Keyes), Friday, May 16, 2014 7:55 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

to a lesser degree, same deal in all the slams on yes and rush; jon a and geddy sing like girls, you know

plus, real men don't practice their instruments

What a fascinating turn this has taken. Seems to easy to criticize Queen...Okay, so fascism is supposed to be a mass phenomenon...so...the first Queen songs I heard on the radio "Killer Queen"..."You're My Best Friend". Okay but this is not fascism...

Don't get me started on the evil lurking in other seventies groups...let's start with The Carpenters. Karen Carpenter is a brilliant singer, I consider myself a fan. But Carpenters had a similar critical response because....they were popular among the "beautiful music" crowd who, at the time, were semi-fascist. Those people got their own radio stations on FM radio!! This was in US suburbia at the time. Every white American suburb had at least one Nazi. What did they enjoy? The Carpenters and Ray Conniff!

Every white American suburb had at least one Nazi.

::pulls up 1980 census statistics::

re: influence, I don't know that I'd necessarily consider Lady Gaga (whom I like) or Smashing Pumpkins (whom I don't) reflective of a particularly "deep or lasting influence," despite what the artists themselves claim. They say Queen, I hear Zep, they say Freddie, I hear Bowie, you say Corgan, I say hey man, the Pumpkins were never my scene, and I don't like Cobain.

Def Lepperd sold more records with a way more fascistic sound

UABIHO could you explain in what ways you think ver Lep's sound was more fascistic that Queen's? I'm still trying to get which elements of sonic elements of this stuff people find fascistic (partly because I sort of understand why people would say it about Queen but I can't articulate why).

I was going to say something about Hitler actually having decent taste in music but tbh I'm not the biggest fan of late Romanticism. Seriously, though, 'Nazi musical aesthetics' were mostly just a celebration of the Germanic symphonic tradition, right?

In Julian Cope's book he talks about the Teardrop Explodes supporting Queen at some big outdoors shows in the UK in the early '80s, and being confronted with Queen fans screaming homophobic insults at him; some took the trouble to underline their hatred by lobbing bottles of piss in Cope's direction.

The members of Queen were not to blame for that behaviour, for sure, but (as Matt mentions way upthread) there was something strange about the way Freddie M's sexuality was thought about in the UK in the 70s and 80s. Although he was as camp as tuppence, and the lead singer of a band called Queen, I reckon a really substantial part of the band's fan base at that time would have sworn that FM was not gay; that's if they ever thought about it at all.

I was going to say something about Hitler actually having decent taste in music but tbh I'm not the biggest fan of late Romanticism. Seriously, though, 'Nazi musical aesthetics' were mostly just a celebration of the Germanic symphonic tradition, right?― EveningStar (Sund4r), Monday, May 19, 2014 8:46 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Adorno asserted that in reality the Nazis (and/or the German public) found much of the German symphonic tradition indigestible, and instead leaned on latter-day regurgitations of its forms if not its struggles (etc. etc, insert Adorno here), by composers no one has bothered with since. Obviously he has his biases but I found this interesting. I think it's in ''The Arts Under National Socialism,'' can go look it up later but this is ILM so I suspect y'all know it better than I do.

the idea of a "fascistic sound" is pretty hilarious in this context IMO. does rush have an "anarcho-libertarian sound"? would you classify leonard cohen's sound as more of a "welfare state" sound? what about ABBA?

honestly, it seems like a red herring applied to queen or led zeppelin or whomever. who gives a shit what hitler listened to, or what adorno had to say about it? it has nothing whatever to do with queen. it's not as though those accusing them of "fascism" had some nuanced historical understanding of fascist aesthetics. it's not a grounded accusation; marsh wasn't likening "killer queen" to any particular style of music or composer, or even analogizing it to speer or riefenstahl or something.

Tim, that's quite true about Queen's fans—Mercury managed to connote hetero-macho to some, camp to others in a way that probably seemed mutually exclusive to all but a few who were paying close attention.

I can't decide

Which to go for

(side note: IDK why ILX seems to be deflecting to adorno so often these days—or maybe it's just threads I'm on—when about half of the time he was clearly talking out of his ass.)

(often enough it seems like an appeal to authority fallacy.)

it seems to me that my chemical romance borrowed the most 'fascistic' aesthetic elements of queen in stuff like "black parade" which practically sounds like a marching song?

hey it doesn't make any more sense when you put it in scare quotes!

marching songs don't mean fascist songs, are we still arguing this?

i think fascist like an aestheticization of politics vis-a-vis benjamin

are you trolling? now you bring benjamin into this? oy vey!

queen isn't an "aestheticization of politics" in the sense you mean because it's difficult to say they have an intrinsic politics at all, much less a fascist one.

also all politics is aestheticized! big deal.

sorry for overposting, i'm just sick of people throwing the frankfurt school in my face. gives me grad-school seminar flashbacks.

i agree the political element is inchoate but some kind of stylized bombastic populism maybe. idk about all politics being aestheticized tho.

well, when you're talking about pop culture and fascism it only makes sense to talk about frankfurt school

like the opposite condition is the politicization of aesthetics (aka Communism)

good soundbites, mordy

also you're not "talking about" the frankfurt school you're just name-dropping

it's not necessarily a bad thing that the music evokes fascism for ppl. it could even be a good thing if you think of it as somehow resisting or undermining the aestheticization - or divorcing it from the true political context. i think you're going about this the wrong way tho. instead of saying, 'i don't see how it's fascist therefore anyone who sees that is wrong,' doesn't it make more sense to ask what people are seeing in it that lead to that (possibly fallacious) conclusion?

ok i'm out for 24 hours. i think contenderizer had the last word anyway.

i just quoted a direct line from a benjamin essay so i'm not just "name-dropping"