Anyone who has listened to Queen typically notices the power of Freddie Mercury right off the bat. Whether it’s his massive flair onstage or the technical side of him in the studio, every single one of Queen’s massive hits usually comes down to the way that Mercury conducted himself, right? Well, there may not have been such a thing as Queen without Mercury, but Brian May was responsible for giving the band their edge.
Before Mercury had even joined the group, May and Roger Taylor were working in the band Smile and writing the lion’s share of the material. Mercury didn’t take long to assert himself as the frontman, but some of the greatest tracks in their catalogue would be reserved for May.
Outside of the massive hits, he would score for the band, May’s greatest strength lay in the deep cuts he wrote for the band. Whether it was co-writing with his bandmates or coming in with fully fleshed-out songs, May could just as easily create an excellent track on his own rather than hand it over to Mercury to hit the home run.
Whereas Mercury is known for being a musical chameleon half the time, Mercury was just as willing to adapt, either putting different spins on traditional rock tunes or embracing everything from folk to jazz to hard rock to pop. May gets a lot of credit for his piercing solos whenever he played live, but he was much more powerful as a songwriter than many people probably thought.
So, what hit songs did Brian May write for Queen?
Right out of the gate, May proved himself to be a worthy competitor to Mercury’s song-crafting with ‘Keep Yourself Alive’, which was a leftover from their previous iteration without Mercury. Although many of the band’s celebrated hits came from Mercury, like ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, May also had a hand in writing the rockers in their catalogue, from the stunning ‘Now I’m Here’ to the power-pop banger ‘Hammer to Fall’.
May should also be applauded for giving the world the gift to football stadiums everywhere with ‘We Will Rock You’, whose skeletal construction was meant to get the audience involved in every one of their songs. Although every member of Queen could claim to have written one of their biggest hits, that was only the beginning of what May could do once he ventured into the studio.
Which album songs were credited to May?
The guitar player often gets a lot of flak for just wanting to shred. As much as people might like the idea of people playing their instruments as fast as possible, there’s a fine line between grandstanding and actually writing something that people want to hear again. May never let his musical showmanship get in the way of a good song, and whenever he brought something to the table, it usually ran the gamut of different genres.
Although it’s easy to spot his love of blues and progressive rock on Queen’s earlier albums, he started to spread his wings on A Night at the Opera, embracing everything from folk on ‘39’ to old-time jazz on ‘Good Company’. Up until the day that Mercury passed away, May was still looking to push the envelope whenever he sat down to write a song, penning such classics as ‘I Want It All’ and Mercury’s final show-stopping number, ‘The Show Must Go On’.
Queen had a definitive sound whenever you picked up one of their records, but there’s a certain spirit to Brian May songs that you don’t really get if they exclusively had Mercury write all their material.