Queen Essentials

For Queen, rock was merely a jumping-off point. Formed in London in 1970, singer Freddie Mercury, guitarist Brian May, drummer Roger Taylor, and bassist John Deacon built high-octane pop songs out of parts boosted from classical music, dance music, doo-wop, New Wave, metal, and opera, forging one of the most distinctive and distinguished catalogues in modern music history. They wrote complex songs but always winked at their own penchant for excess, best captured on 1975’s audacious A Night at the Opera, which featured “Bohemian Rhapsody,” a six-minute mini-opera and an unlikely hit. As their career progressed and their popularity soared, they perfected less complex styles, scoring their biggest hit with the indelible groove of 1980’s “Another One Bites the Dust.” (“We Are the Champions” and “We Will Rock You,” from 1977, will be around as long as sporting arenas of any kind exist.) Their success continued through the ’80s, even as Mercury was quietly living with AIDS. After his death in 1991, Queen carried on in various forms, with Paul Rodgers and Adam Lambert taking turns in front for tours and new recordings.