Normally I wouldn't touch a single like this but I'm not one to run away from a challenge and this certainly is one. It is so hard to review this without referencing Freddie Mercury and the legacy of Queen so I asked a lot of questions and then focused on the music.
The review:
It would be easy to say that Queen should have given up when Freddie Mercury died. It would be easy to say that Brian May and Roger Taylor have nothing more to offer. It would be easy to say that the memory of a former lead singer was worth more than trying to honour his memory by flogging a dead horse. But things are never that easy. May and Taylor obviously think they have more to give. So this new venture is half of Queen (John Deacon has quit) joined by Paul Rodgers (former singer with Free and Bad Company). And that is the real problem here. If this isn't Queen, then why continue under the same name? Why not move on and do something different with a different brand? Surely May and Taylor are household names and can make it on their own? Nobody can deny the lasting legacy of Queen and the considerable charity work after Mercury's death (most notably his tribute concert raising millions of pounds for AIDS causes), but musically the band are in limbo.'C-lebrity' is an attempt to highlight the problems with the modern phenomenon of 'celebrity', possibly to shame and ridicule those who are no longer having to work for their new found fame. It feels like some form of vindication but ends up sounding bitter and empty. The guitar work from Brian May is, as always, exceptional and Roger Taylor echoes this with some fine drumming. There are some neat touches like short blasts of sampled crowd screaming and Paul Rodgers throws his bluesy drawl over everything. But the real disappointment is the ludicrously simple chorus which attempts to emulate the trademark layered vocal harmonies of the Roy Thomas Baker days. What actually emerges is thin and weak. Two minutes in and the idea really starts to stretch thin - a predictable, but short, May guitar solo followed by the wonderful hypocrisy of "I wanna be a star in a Broadway musical...". So 'We Will Rock You' was a bad idea then? Another couple of laboured choruses and a messy ending just drags it out.
It leaves a sour taste in your mouth when one of the world's most successful bands (or not as the case might be) tries to criticise the current trend of 'celebrity culture' while sitting on their millions safe in the knowledge that they no longer have to work for a living. This is a very poor choice of subject and above all it is not a very good or original song. It's just really hard to hate it.
-- CS (for The Music Magazine)
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