Happy 70th, Freddie

"I'm just a musical prostitute, my dear."

Today marks the legend that is Freddie Mercury's birthday. I've been listening to Absolute Radio all day (The UK's best radio station imo), and they've been playing a Queen song every hour in honor of his b-day. Since I keep hearing my favourite songs pop up, I thought I'd list them here in regards to certain memories I have attached to them. 

No surprise, Queen were a huge part of my childhood and Freddie was someone who I'd try (and fail) to impersonate on a daily basis in our living room. 

Anyone that has heard 'Flash' will use it in every way humanly possible, but in my mind no one will beat the time my Dad performed the ultimate Dad joke. We were driving to our local DIY store on a dark evening in the winter during a thunderstorm. We'd stopped to pick something up from another shop on the way, and just as we were about to pull off into the road there was a huge flash of lightning. Scared silence ensued (since I'm terrified of thunderstorms), so my Dad decided to quell the situation by performing a rendition of the chorus, shouting 'FLASH! AH-AHHH', leaving me in absolute hysterics. 

This was a tune for me before I experienced Wayne's World, but that film breathed fresh new life into the song. It gives Wayne's World the best opening of a film - don't let anyone tell you otherwise - and also gave me new moves to add to my already performative renditions of the song, namely the crescendo of headbanging in the car. 

Whoever I'm with, whenever it comes on the radio they only have to look at me and they know what I have in mind, and they can't help but join in. Thanks, Wayne's World. 

This is such a underrated Queen classic, which somehow is always missed on the 'top whatever Queen tracks' lists. 'Now I'm Here' has one of Queen's best guitar riffs, and is just an all around belter. 

'Now I'm Here' was literally the song I had on repeat on my old iPod Nano in 2007 whilst on a family holiday in Cyprus. Whenever I hear that song it makes me miss that week with the fam; it was a blast. 

Similar to 'Now I'm Here', 'We Will Rock You' was another holiday song. At least I think it was. It's a piece of a fragmented memory; it's either a car journey I took to my Grandparents & Godparents in Cambridge and Haverhill or part of a holiday trip to Cornwall. What I do remember (vaguely) is that it was in my Dad's old Ford Scorpio, and it was on a cassette tape. 

Whatever the precise memory was, I was definitely pretty young and it was one of the first songs I became obsessed and in love with. 

Being a big Queen fan since I was a kid (thanks to my parents), it gave me the opportunity to beg my Dad to see the We Will Rock You musical in London. It had its final performance at The Dominion Theater in 2014, but I managed to see it in 2007 (and again in my hometown a few years later). 

The whole show is absolutely phenomenal, but it's the performance of the track 'Hammer To Fall' that is by far my favourite. They way in which it's augmented into the musical as an argument between the two main characters makes so much sense, and it's helped even more by Tony Vincent and Hannah Jane Fox. 

'Hammer To Fall' was my favourite Queen song before the musical, but the We Will Rock You cemented my love for it even further.