I Want To Break Free Of This Rubbish

The album's called Absolute Greatest. The press release has been filed under Absolute Bollocks. Queen are a terrible band, but even I think they deserve better than this.

Thanks to an LiS reader with a taste for olives for sending it in.

From: "O'Brien, Richard" [OBrienR@emigroup.com]
Date: 3 September 2009 10:35:03 BST
Subject: NEWS FROM EMI: Queen - Absolute Greatest hits package released November 9

QUEEN – ABSOLUTE GREATEST

20 Years of Biggest of Queen’s Biggest Hits - In music (and pictures & live performances) Four CD & Vinyl/Compact & Luxury Formats. 2 Digital formats.

Queen. Someone ought to erect a monument to them GREAT START! Think about it: they’ve ruled their game longer than many of our most famous leaders STARTING TO WOBBLE ALREADY, their words can be repeated by many more than can recite our most celebrated writers THIS IS GETTING UGLY NOW, and despite more than three generations passing since they first blasted their way into our consciences HE MEANS CONSCIOUSNESS, they’re just as omnipresent today as they ever were OH DEAR ME, THIS IS BAD. Just for starters (and more to follow):

- Queen are Britain’s favourite band: the BPI BLAHBLAHBLAH 50 years ago.

- Queen are the most BLAHBLAHBLAH 300 million records sold.

And let’s not forget Queen’s unmatched global dominance as live artists HE’S BEEN DEAD FOR 18 YEARS. There’s not a continent in the world Queen’s legendary tours haven’t touched down in, in many cases arriving ahead of anyone else: think South America, Mexico, the Eastern Bloc. AND SOUTH AFRICA! YOU FORGOT THAT ONE! And who but the wisest would know that even somewhere down there in the desert of Antarcticasits YOU WHAT? a permanent plaque bearing Queen’s name HAVE ANOTHER GO AT THIS ONE.

- Always ready to try something new, Queen brokerock YOU MEAN “BROKE ROCK” convention and created a stage musical THAT’S NOT “BREAKING CONVENTION” IT’S CALLED WALLET-EMPTYING BRAND BUILDING, We Will Rock You, and some eight years on it still sells out nightly in Londonand HE MEANS “LONDON AND” just recently their all-time worldwide audience crossed over the 10 million mark.

Beyond that, Queen continue to sell out concerts, are ready to lend their celebrity power unreservedly when they see just causes – such as Nelson Mandela’s 46664 campaign *SAYS NOTHING*; have quietly collected and distributed over $15 million dollars through their own charity the Mercury Phoenix Trust - fighting AIDS worldwide, and most telling of all, continue to be held in the highest esteem by the lead runners in today’s Rock Pack I LOVE ALL THE LEADING RUNNERS IN TODAY'S ROCK PACK, DON'T YOU? who cite the band’s influence over them in their founding years.

Let’s face it: few other acts have so embedded themselves into our lives that we can’t imagine a time when Queen weren’t around, or can imagine such a time in the future. THIS BIT IS BALLS.

So what is it about Queen that makes it all so? SO WHAT?

You have to look no further than the BLAHBLAH all comes from.

Charting over 21 years of making people rock OUCH!, feel OUCH!, sense MAKING PEOPLE SENSE? and celebrate, Absolute Greatest reminds us just what fine, and smart, rock and pop writers and musicians Messrs "MESSRS" AMAZING! Deacon, May, Mercury and Taylor were (are SAD FACE). Also that they had a sense of humour, which is perhaps another thing that made them so accessible. ONE OF THE ALL-TIME BAD SENTENCES OF ALL-TIME THERE.

The earliest hit presented here, Seven Seas of Rhye (1974) reminds us of those days when we wondered about why they had chosen the name Queen PERHAPS ONE OF THEM WAS A HOMOSEXUAL?, whether they really were just an arrogant bunch pushing their luck in Zandra Rhodes frocks and black nail varnish AMAZING, or whether they really were the future of Progressive Rock? KILL ME NOW To make us further wonder, they didn’t stop there - they went on to defiantly title their next single Killer Queen. OH CHRIST PLEASE DON’T GO THROUGH ALL OF THEM.

Then they flashed the wit and made us all smile and feel good at the same time with those jaunty ditties JAUNTY DITTIES! like Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Radio Ga Ga, and I Want To Break Free. And hell, who would have thought that Roger Taylor would look so fetching in that pre-Britney schoolgirl outfit? KILL ME AGAIN. HARDER THIS TIME.

And if you wanted a mass celebration, who better than Queen, who could bond tens of thousands of total strangers and get them chanting or arm-waving in unison to May’s terse TERSE? TERSE? We Will Rock You or Mercury’s more emotionally charged We Are The Champions.

They could at the drop of a hat be romantic, as Deacon proved with You’re My Best Friend, or friends to heartbreak, as we saw in Mercury’s Somebody to Love or May’s Who Wants to Live Forever.

Queen provided a mood and backdrop for every time and every occasion, and were often at their best when they went for almost breath-taking high drama: aided by David Bowie they gave us the brooding heart pounding rhythms of Under Pressure, the operatically ballistic THAT’S “OPERATICALLY BALLISTIC”, PEOPLE! Bohemian Rhapsody, and perhaps the ultimate curtain-call rock song, The Show Must Go On.

A joyous celebration of Queen’s - and many of our own - greatest BLAH this collection.

In a limited-edition BLAH performances.

OK - so it should not be expected we will see the likenesses of Queen carved into Mount Rushmore PERHAPS IF THEY WERE AMERICAN. OR POLITICIANS or find their way to a Trafalgar Square plinth (now there’s an AWFUL idea), so for the moment let’s accept that Absolute Greatest will serve as a terrific tribute to a monumental music YOU MEAN MUSICAL history. Ah, these are (indeed) the days of our lives. AMAZING FINISH – TAKE REST OF DAY OFF!