Queen is a top 5 band of all time. Freddy Mercury is the greatest male vocalist of all time.
I love this band.
Still, the lyrics of some of their songs are just ridiculous. “Bohemian Rhapsody” being the most obvious. Yes, I love the song, and yes, I think it’s one of the greatest rock songs of all time, but there are moments when it simply makes no sense.
“Don’t Stop Me Now,” which might be my favorite Queen song, doesn’t suffer from nonsensical lyrics, but it has its own set of lyrical problems.
Take this stanza, for example.
I’m a shooting star, leaping through the sky
Like a tiger defying the laws of gravity
I’m a racing car, passing by like Lady Godiva
I’m gonna go, go, go
There’s no stopping me
I know it’s nitpicking, but which one are you, Freddy? A shooting star or a tiger? I think it’s both, since the shooting star is “leaping,” but talk about mixing metaphors. Then a second later those metaphors are upended by a new one. Now Freddy is a racing car passing by like Lady Godiva.
Three lines. Three different metaphors.
Oh, and in case you have never understood the Lady Godiva reference, Freddy is referring here to Godiva, Countess of Mercia, an English noblewoman who, according to a legend dating at least to the 13th century, rode naked – covered only in her long, red hair – through the streets of Coventry in order to convince her husband to lift the oppressive taxation that he had imposed on his tenants.
So guess the racing car is naked? Or a tax protester? Or red headed?
But this isn’t the stanza that annoys me the most. The most egregious is this one:
I’m burnin’ through the sky, yeah
Two hundred degrees
That’s why they call me Mister Fahrenheit
I’m traveling at the speed of light
I wanna make a supersonic man out of you
My problem here?
The temperature.
200 degrees? You’re traveling at the speed of light, Freddy, but you’re burning through the sky at a temperature that wouldn’t bake a brownie? Coffee is routinely served at 180-205 degrees, so Freddy is apparently burning through the sky at 299,792,458 meters per second but has only managed to reach the temperature of a cup of coffee?
Mr. Fahrenheit? I don’t think so.
I know. I’m nitpicking. I’m nitpicking a song that I adore. I listen to it all the time, and even though these lyrics make me a little crazy, they make me happy to sing them.
But the writer in me loves good lyrics. Sensible lyrics. Lyrics that tell a story or express an idea or feeling clearly in a combination of words that I have never heard before. I love it when a musician can perfectly marry words and music to create something that is sonically appealing while also being thoughtful, insightful, and sensible.
Queen fails this test with “Don’t Stop Me Now.”
Nevertheless, I love the hell out of the song because sometimes a song is so good that it can overcome its flawed lyrics.
