The 72nd Anniversary of the Birth of John Lennon

John Lennon (born John Winston Lennon; October 9, 1940 – December 8, 1980) was the founder of a Liverpool skiffle band called the Quarrymen, which, following membership changes that included the addition of fellow Liverpool teens Paul McCartney and George Harrison and a series of name changes, became the Beatles. The Beatles, of course, following the addition of Ringo Starr on drums, went on to conquer the world and become the most successful popular music group ever, both artistically and commercially. Lennon would be 72 years old if he were alive today. Since he isn’t, his public image is in certain senses fixed; for instance, the photos of him that are most frequently seen are from the 1960s (when he was in his 20s), the 1970s (when he was in his 30s) or, slightly less commonly, from the last year of his life, around the time he turned 40. In other ways, his image continues to evolve – but, as with other celebrities who have died, without being influenced for better or worse by anything he himself does.

As the founder of the group, John was commonly seen as the leader of the Beatles, especially in their early years. In many senses, this was the truth; in interviews, for instance, while all of them made clever remarks, John usually had the sharpest wit and commonly acted as the spokesman for the group as a whole. Within the band, the others also tended to follow John’s lead. Musically, Paul McCartney very quickly, if not from the very beginning of their recording career, became as much of a leader as John, and in the group’s later years, Paul clearly took charge in the studio. But in other ways, John remained the group’s spiritual leader. If, for instance, he actively opposed something Paul wanted to do rather than just apathetically going along, it was not likely to happen. Likewise, if he really wanted to do something, the others would generally go along.

I argued in my article on Paul McCartney that Paul contributed at least as much to the Beatles as John did, and so should be held in equal regard. This does not diminish John’s importance, however. Paul was (and arguably still is) a musical genius, but so was John. In many ways, they complemented each other perfectly. Of course, due to their background, they has a lot of the same taste in music (early rock and roll, Motown, etc.) and likewise shared a natural, untutored talent for composition. But in other ways they were quite different. The stereotype that Paul wrote melodic ballads and John wrote straight-ahead rock and roll is exaggerated, as Paul wrote plenty of harder-edged tunes and John wrote some lovely ballads, but like most stereotypes it had some basis in reality. Paul had much more of an interest in music hall and other pre-rock styles, as is seen from songs like “Honey Pie”, whereas John at best tolerated such detours. Lyrically, John often had a cynical and caustic edge, whereas Paul was usually sunny and optimistic. This difference was most obvious in later years, but it was clear from the beginning: for example, it’s hard to imagine Paul writing songs like “I’m a Loser” or “Help”, or John writing a song like “I’ll Follow the Sun”. These opposing or rather complementary ways of looking at things can even be seen in songs they wrote together, like “We Can Work It Out” or “Getting Better”, as John and Paul themselves observed in their comments on these songs.

I noted in my previous article that while John wrote many of the most cutting edge, experimental songs the group put out, Paul often played an important, even vital role in arranging and producing them. But for Paul to have an opportunity to experiment with tape loops on “Tomorrow Never Knows” or an orchestra going crazy on “A Day in the Life”, or have a chance to play an otherworldly Mellotron intro on “Strawberry Fields Forever”, John had to write those songs in the first place (or most of the song in the case of “A Day in the Life”). While the Beatles wouldn’t have been the great band they were without Paul’s contributions, John was just as indispensable (it can reasonably be argued that George and Ringo were indispensable as well, but in terms of songwriting, John and Paul were clearly the key to the group’s artistic greatness). The songs referred to above are not only among the most innovative the Beatles recorded, but among the best in popular music history, and the world would be a much poorer place without any of them, not to mention “Help”, “Norwegian Wood”, “I Am the Walrus”, “Come Together” and many others that John wrote.

John’s solo career got off to a great start with several great singles like “Give Peace a Chance”, “Cold Turkey” and “Instant Karma” and the brilliant John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970). The latter album was filled with stark, emotional tracks like “Mother”, “God”, “Love”, “I Found Out” and “Working Class Heroes”. While it was a dramatic departure from the recordings made by the Beatles, it is almost universally well-regarded and is seen by many (including me) as John’s best solo album. His only other solo album to sometimes figure in top album lists is his second, Imagine (1971), due to not only the title track, which is by far the best known Lennon solo song (with only “Give Peace a Chance” being almost as widely heard), but other solid efforts like “Jealous Guy”, “Gimme Some Truth” and “It’s So Hard” (it also contains “How Do You Sleep”, an attack on Paul that is wrongly taken to represent how John felt about his former partner in the post-Beatles era – in fact it represented the nadir of their relationship). His other solo albums, Some Time in New York City (1972), Mind Games (1973), Walls and Bridges (1974), the oldies album Rock 'n' Roll (1975), Double Fantasy (1980) and the posthumous Milk and Honey (1984) – the last two and the first of these being partly made up of songs by his wife Yoko Ono – are considered something more of a mixed bag. Nowadays most critics view them mostly positively (except Some Time in New York City, which many regard as overly strident in tone), but they are generally held to have a fair number of mediocre songs, though opinions vary as to which are the good ones and which the mediocre ones. I haven’t listened to some of these albums all the way through more than a few times, since I don’t have copies of all of them, but my general impression is that they aren’t as consistent as his first two. However, they do all have at least a few good and even great songs, like “Mind Games”, “#9 Dream”, “(Just Like) Starting Over”, “Watching The Wheels” and “Nobody Told Me”.

Since he was murdered by a deranged fan just as he was beginning a comeback following a long sabbatical from music, John Lennon has been almost deified by many music fans. His idealism, his witty cynicism, and his (sometimes brutal) honesty all played a major role in making him the hip people’s favorite Beatle, but being seen as a martyr had at least as much to do with it as any of his real virtues, just as John F. Kennedy is generally ranked as one of the greatest presidents in polls of ordinary Americans more because he was assassinated than for any actual accomplishments. John’s death has resulted in a number of distortions in the public view of him. One is his relationship with Paul after the Beatles, which was much better than commonly believed; despite a period of hostility, they later hung out together and even played some music together. Another is his relationship with Yoko, which according to many who knew them was far from perfect. Also, despite his idealism, John could be inconsistent and didn’t always practice what he preached. In terms of music, there has been a tendency to consider John the true source of the Beatles’ greatness. Since this deification of John comes at the expense of the other Beatles and particularly Paul, I have many problems with it, as do others. Peter Gabriel, for example, said in a letter to the editors of The Lennon Companion: “Although I was and I am a big Lennon fan, I feel the canonisation of this particular hero of mine has overlooked the formative roles of the other Beatles, particularly Paul and George, and I am a little concerned that your project may give the gloss and blessings of the arts establishment to a one-sided memory.” It is hard for Paul to compete with a dead man for critical acclaim, but an objective look at their work with the Beatles – and their solo work as well – shows them to be equally deserving of admiration. But even if John should not be placed more highly than Paul, he certainly ranks alongside him as one of the most important figures in 20th century popular music. His songs, his wit, and his idealism were and still are an inspiration to countless people, and will doubtless continue to be for a long time to come.

Below I have listed 50 of John Lennon’s best songs with the Beatles. While I haven’t included songs like “She Loves You” that were written more or less equally by John and Paul, I have included a few that Paul made a substantial contribution to, most notably “A Day in the Life”, where Paul not only wrote the middle section but the “I’d love to turn you on” line. There is also some dispute regarding the authorship of “In My Life”; while everyone agrees that John wrote all the lyrics, Paul says he wrote the melody, whereas John said Paul only helped with the middle eight. Since it’s impossible to verify either account (unlike in the case of “Eleanor Rigby”, John and Paul seem to have been the only ones present for the writing of “In My Life”), I have assumed it was mainly John’s, though Paul certainly helped on the melody. I didn’t try to make a list of John’s best solo songs; a few of the best are mentioned above, but a full list will have to wait for a future article.

John Lennon with the Beatles
Please Please Me
It Won’t Be Long
Not a Second Time
This Boy
A Hard Day’s Night
I Should Have Known Better
If I Fell
You Can’t Do That
I Feel Fine
No Reply
I’m a Loser
Help
You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away
Ticket to Ride
You’re Going to Lose That Girl
Day Tripper (Lyrics and Music co-written by Paul McCartney)
Norwegian Wood (Lyrics co-written by Paul McCartney)
Nowhere Man
In My Life (Music co-written by Paul McCartney)
Girl
Rain
I’m Only Sleeping
She Said She Said
And Your Bird Can Sing
Tomorrow Never Knows
Strawberry Fields Forever
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (Lyrics co-written by Paul McCartney)
Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite
A Day in the Life (Lyrics and Music co-written by Paul McCartney)
All You Need is Love
I Am the Walrus
Revolution
Dear Prudence
Glass Onion
Happiness Is a Warm Gun
I’m So Tired
Julia
Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey
Yer Blues
Good Night
Don’t Let Me Down
Hey Bulldog
The Ballad of John and Yoko
Come Together
I Want You (She’s So Heavy)
Because
Mean Mr. Mustard/Polythene Pam
Across the Universe
Free as a Bird (Lyrics and Music co-written by McCartney/Harrison/Starkey)
Real Love

Gordon Sumner, aka Sting

Sting, born Gordon Sumner on October 2, 1951, is a singer-songwriter and musician who first became famous as the lead vocalist and chief songwriter for the Police. Prior to joining the Police, he had played in a number of bands in his native Newcastle, most notably Last Exit. Sting was the group’s bassist and singer (the same roles he later had in the Police) and the other key figure was keyboard player Gerry Richardson, who wrote "Whispering Voices" and "Evensong", the songs on the only single the band released. Many of the other songs the band played live were tracks that Sting later reused with the Police or as a solo artist, such as “I Burn for You”, "Oh My God", “Truth Kills” (an early version of “Truth Hits Everybody”), and “Savage Beast” (an early version of “We Work the Black Seam”). It’s interesting to note how these jazz-influenced arrangements are not unlike much of Sting’s post-Police solo work. For those who want to know more about this part of Sting’s career and his life up until the time the Police began to make it big, his excellent autobiography, Broken Music, is well worth checking out.

As he makes clear in his autobiography, one of Sting’s main motivations for teaming up with drummer Stewart Copeland to form the Police is that as he saw it as a vehicle to break into the music business. While Copeland conceived the group as a punk band (though Sting implies that Copeland – who had previously been the drummer in the progressive band Curved Air, which was likewise far removed from punk – also may have been exploiting musical trends), Sting liked neither the name nor the kind of music they played at first, and tried to steer the group in a more romantic direction at first opportunity. That he eventually succeeded can be seen from their later material, much of which bore no resemblance whatsoever to punk.

While Sting very quickly took over from Copeland as the main songwriter in the Police, both Copeland and guitarist Andy Summers, who replaced original guitarist Henri Padovani before the group’s first major label recordings, played important roles, particularly in the arranging. They resisted Sting’s inclinations towards more jazzy numbers, and Copeland in particular made the songs much more up-tempo than they would have been if it had been entirely up to Sting. Nevertheless, as the writer of the songs, Sting deserves the greatest share of the credit for the group’s success. Songs like “Message in a Bottle”, “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic”, “King of Pain” and “Every Breath You Take” are brilliant regardless of the arrangement, and even those such as the excellent “Synchronicity II” where it’s hard to imagine them without the propulsive arrangement the Police gave them, much of their virtue comes from Sting’s lyrics and melody.

After Sting went solo, he no longer felt constrained to keep things simple lyrically and musically, so he incorporated more jazz and classical influences into his music and his lyrics became if possible even more literary (though it is hard to top rhymes using Nabokov and Charybdis, both of which appear in Police songs). This has resulted in charges of pretentiousness from critics, but I see no reason why pop music can’t be intelligent and literary; for that matter, the way some of the same critics dismiss many popular, established artists out of hand in favor of underground music or the next new trend is just pretentious in its way. While Sting’s solo work generally doesn’t have the immediate, visceral appeal of his hits with the Police, it is on the whole just as good. Of course, that doesn’t mean every song he has released either with the Police or as a solo artist is great, but even the least appealing songs are listenable, and the best are classics.

While all of the albums Sting has released are worth listening to, the best of the five Police albums in my view are Zenyatta Mondatta (1980) and Synchronicity (1983), with Ghost in the Machine (1981) not far behind. The best Sting solo album to date is Ten Summoner’s Tales (1993), followed by The Dream of the Blue Turtles (1985) and Brand New Day (1999). …Nothing Like the Sun (1987) and The Soul Cages (1991), though not quite as consistently enjoyable as the above three, have two of the very best songs he ever wrote, “Fragile” and “All This Time” respectively, as well some other good material, particularly in the case of The Soul Cages ("Mad About You" and "Why Should I Cry For You" are also excellent, so I might sometimes put this album in my top three, depending on my mood). For that matter, Mercury Falling (1996) and Sacred Love (2003) are both solid, if not quite equal to his other albums. Sting’s last three albums have not been albums of new material: Songs from the Labyrinth (2006) was an album of the songs Elizabethan composer John Dowland, If on a Winter’s Night… (2009) was an album of winter-themed songs (mostly traditional, though a few of Sting’s own songs were included), and Symphonicities (2010) was an album of reinterpretations of previous Sting songs as classical symphony pieces. While I don’t have If on a Winter’s Night…, the other two are quite interesting, even if it would also be nice to hear an album of new songs. Sting has also released close to two albums’ worth of tracks on movie soundtracks or as B-sides of singles, including both original songs and covers. Of his more obscure B-sides, a favorite of mine is “Conversation with a Dog”, which is as good as anything except “Fragile” on Nothing Like the Sun, the album it’s an outtake from. I also quite like "Beneath a Desert Moon".

Sting's songwriting is generally pretty consistent in terms of both lyrics and melodies. On some songs the melody seems to take a back seat to the lyrics, but on his best songs the match is excellent. Aside from being a very good singer, he is a talented bassist and guitarist (his playing on "Fragile" is a good example of the latter), and he also plays a bit of keyboard and numerous other instruments. No doubt in part due to his ability to play multiple instruments, he's also a great arranger, though fans of the Police may miss the contributions of Summers and Copeland in this regard. In addition to his musical skills, Sting has also contributed to many worthy causes such as human rights (he has performed for Amnesty International) and the environment. Admittedly, his record is not perfect; he did a commercial for Jaguar, which doesn't quite accord with his environmentalism, and he did a concert in Uzbekistan paid for by their authoritarian president. However, the good he has done outweighs these (admittedly rather glaring) misdeeds.

I have listed thirty of Sting’s best songs with the Police and as a solo artist. As usual, there are other songs that I like more or less as well as some of those that I included, and if I were to redo the list without referring to this one, it would no doubt come out differently.

The Best of Sting
(All songs written by Sting except where otherwise noted; tracks 1-14 originally performed by the Police)

Roxanne
Can’t Stand Losing You
Message in a Bottle
Walking on the Moon
Don’t Stand So Close to Me
De Do Do Do De Da Da Da
Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
Spirits in the Material World
Invisible Sun
Every Breath You Take
Synchronicity II
King of Pain
Wrapped Around Your Finger
I Burn for You
If You Love Somebody Set Them Free
Fortress around Your Heart
Russians (Music: Sting, Sergei Prokofiev)
Moon Over Bourbon Street
Fragile
Conversation with a Dog
All This Time
Mad About You
Fields of Gold
Seven Days
Saint Augustine in Hell
Epilogue (Nothing ‘Bout Me)
The Hounds of Winter
Desert Rose
Brand New Day
Send Your Love

Honorable Mentions: Driven to Tears, Canary in a Coalmine, When the World Is Running Down You Make the Best of What's Still Around, One World (Not Three), Tea in the Sahara, Children’s Crusade, Be Still My Beating Heart, Englishman in New York, Why Should I Cry for You, Saint Agnes and the Burning Train, If I Ever Lose My Faith in You, She's Too Good for Me, Shape of My Heart (Music: Dominic Miller), Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot, All Four Seasons, I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying, Beneath a Desert Moon, After the Rain Has Fallen, A Thousand Years (Kipper/Sting), Ghost Story, Inside, Whenever I Say Your Name

Mike Rutherford of Genesis

Over the past few months I have done a number of entries on members of some of my favorite long-lasting bands as well as one or two individual artists. Thus far I have published my entries on the birthdays of the musicians in question, but I'm going to have to make an exception in this case, as both Mike Rutherford of Genesis and Sting have the same birthday (only a year apart too). So I'm doing my entry on Rutherford a few days early, and I hope to finish one on Sting in time for his birthday (especially since an even more important artist has a birthday a week later, namely John Lennon of the Beatles).

Mike Rutherford of Genesis

Mike Rutherford (full name Michael John Cleote Crawford Rutherford, born October 2, 1950) was one of the founding members of Genesis, and, other than Tony Banks, the only member to remain with the group throughout its history. While in my article on Tony Banks I argued that he was probably the single most important member of Genesis in that he more than anyone else was responsible for the group’s overall sound, Mike Rutherford played nearly as important a role over the years. At the time the group formed in 1967, his closest friend and chief collaborator was Anthony Phillips, just as Tony Banks and Peter Gabriel were friends and songwriting collaborators. In the very early years, Rutherford was perhaps somewhat less important in musical terms, as he was probably the least proficient on his instrument (the bass) and the other three did a slightly larger share of the songwriting, but he was vital to the group chemistry, and fairly soon he and Phillips developed a distinctive way of playing 12-string guitars in tandem that was a key element in the group’s sound. By the time Phillips left in 1970, Rutherford was able to step into his role as one of Genesis’s main songwriters along with Banks and Gabriel, and as a performer his bass and 12-string guitar was, along with Phil Collins’s drums, the backbone to the band’s sound in concert. Even in the Gabriel years, Rutherford, Banks and Collins in particular developed a good chemistry in the studio, writing sections of “Supper’s Ready” and “The Cinema Show” as a trio. On his own, Rutherford wrote a few pieces like the opening section of “The Cinema Show”. Rutherford also came up with guitar riffs that various songs were built on, a notable example being “Back in N.Y.C”, which was unusually hard and edgy for a Genesis song, almost proto-punk.

In the years immediately after Gabriel left, Banks and Rutherford were the band’s primary songwriters, though lead guitarist Steve Hackett also wrote some key tracks and Collins contributed to a lot of the group-written tracks (“Dance on a Volcano”, for instance, began with a jam by the Banks-Collins-Rutherford trio, with Rutherford writing the lyrics). While he wrote a little less than Banks, he was the main writer of tracks like “Ripples” (aside from the lyrics, it seems he also wrote all the music with the exception of the instrumental section written by Banks) and “Squonk” (for which he wrote the lyrics and co-wrote the music with Banks). He also wrote “Your Own Special Way”, the first Genesis song to chart in the US. After Hackett left, Rutherford took over all guitar duties in the studio in addition to his role as bassist, and he and Banks at first handled nearly all the songwriting, though Collins soon began to take on a more of a hand in the latter. While Rutherford never became a guitar virtuoso, he soon adapted to using the guitar in a way that combined very well with Banks’s keyboards and Collins’s drums and vocals. A number of songs he wrote entirely on his own appeared on the first three post-Hackett albums, And Then There Were Three, Duke, and Abacab (plus an EP from the same period), but even at this point some of his most important songwriting contributions were on group compositions, such as the hits “Follow You Follow Me” and “Turn It On Again”, both of which were based on riffs that Rutherford came up with and both which he wrote the lyrics for. After Genesis started writing all their songs as a group, there were still many songs that came more from Rutherford than the others (just as there were songs that were more Banks or more Collins), including heavier tracks like “Just a Job to Do”, “Land of Confusion”, and “Dreaming While You Sleep” and ballads like “Taking It All Too Hard” and “Throwing It All Away”, all of which were based mainly on Rutherford’s guitar as well as featuring his lyrics. He also made contributions that are less readily apparent from the instruments used: for instance, the drum machine riff that “Mama” was built on came from Rutherford, not Collins. After Collins finally left the group, it was apparently Rutherford who was most keen to try to keep the group going, though after the relative failure of Calling All Stations, he was also the one who didn’t want to make another attempt (the initially hesitant Banks was more willing to record another album with the new lineup).

Rutherford, like Banks, started his solo career after the release of And Then There Were Three in 1978, though previously he had also contributed heavily to Anthony Phillips’s first solo album (originally intended as a Phillips/Rutherford joint album, though Rutherford’s Genesis commitments scuttled that plan) and co-wrote a song on Steve Hackett's first solo album, released in 1977. On his first solo album, Smallcreep’s Day (1980), he worked with a guest vocalist, and on his second, Acting Very Strange (1982), he handled the vocals himself. He disliked the results and also concluded that he worked best in collaboration with other songwriters, so he formed the group Mike & the Mechanics featuring vocalists Paul Carrack and Paul Young and co-writers B.A. Robertson and Christopher Neil. This group unexpectedly achieved commercial success not far short of Genesis and Phil Collins as a solo artist, leaving Tony Banks, the central figure in Genesis, as the only member not have commercial success as a solo artist (though their manager once asserted that Genesis was Tony Banks’s solo career). Even with the seeming demise of Genesis (unless Collins decides to come back out of retirement and join forces again with Banks and Rutherford as he did in their 2007 reunion tour), Mike and the Mechanics remains active, Rutherford having reformed the group recently – the first incarnation split after the death of Paul Young, and a second incarnation with Paul Carrack in a more prominent role released one album in 2004.

Rutherford’s songwriting tends to be slightly simpler than that of his longtime collaborator Tony Banks, as a comparison of their work both in and outside Genesis shows. In fact, a few fans of the earlier incarnations of Genesis “blame” Rutherford rather than Phil Collins, the usual target, for Genesis becoming more commercial, pointing to songs like “Your Own Special Way”, “Follow You Follow Me”, “Alone Tonight” and “Throwing It All Away” as evidence (of course this assumes that the later version of Genesis is inferior, a view I don’t agree with). While Rutherford’s songs are certainly more direct than those of Banks, there is more to his writing than these ballads, such as the harder-edged songs cited earlier, which give the music of Genesis much needed variety. Lyrically, he is perhaps a bit more consistent than Banks – though he occasionally wrote fairly banal lyrics, he also wrote exceptional ones like “Ripples” and “Land of Confusion”. In the interviews accompanying the remixes of Genesis's albums, he also showed that he is quite perceptive concerning flaws in the band's earlier work, such as their lyrics sometimes being overly "busy" or the music and lyrics clashing due to the way they worked at the time. Judging from his career as a whole, I would have to agree with his own assessment that he works best in collaboration with others. Though one or two songs that he wrote entirely or almost entirely on his own are classics, such as “Ripples”, the vast majority of his best work was co-written with others, even when he was the main writer. Most of the Genesis songs he wrote alone are decent, but on the whole they are not as strong as most of Banks’s solo compositions for the group. As for his solo albums, some parts of Smallcreep’s Day do sound very much like Genesis and much of the music is quite pleasant to listen to, but as a whole the album seems to be lacking something. The same holds true for Acting Very Strange, though I’ll admit I haven’t listened to either album many times and it’s possible that I would discover their virtues through repeated listening. While Mike and the Mechanics is certainly more MOR than his earlier work, and the group has plenty of songs that are simple mediocre (certainly Genesis albums are far more consistent), they also have some that are great, such as “Silent Running”. I generally find Banks’s solo efforts more interesting overall, but the best work of Mike and the Mechanics is quite good as well. In general, what I know of his non-Genesis work supports my impression that while Rutherford often has had great musical ideas, he usually – though not always – needs a collaborator (or two) to help him bring them to completion.

On the list below, for the Gabriel era, I have restricted myself to the few songs that Rutherford is known to have been chiefly responsible for. I have left out songs from the first two Genesis albums that he co-wrote with Phillips, as well as songs that there is no reliable information about (it’s quite possible, for instance, that he was the main composer of songs other than “Back in N.Y.C.” on The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, but no interviews have confirmed this). For the albums where individual songwriting credits are given (from the first post-Gabriel album, A Trick of the Tail, to Abacab), I have generally excluded co-written songs, even where Rutherford wrote the lyrics (such as on “Dance on a Volcano” and “Eleventh Earl of Mar”), with the exception of particularly notable tracks like “Squonk”, “Follow You Follow Me” and “Turn It On Again” [Update: I recently came across an interview in which Rutherford said he wrote the lyrics for "Abacab", so that song probably should be added to those below, as it's one of the band's best tracks from the album of the same name]. For the later years, I have included important songs that Rutherford wrote the lyrics for and for which he seems to have been the driving force compositionally. While with slightly stricter criteria (such as excluding co-written songs like “Squonk” that are not known for certain to be composed mainly by Rutherford and including fewer of the later group compositions), some extra effort (such as editing out the last half of “The Cinema Show” and the instrumental section of “Ripples”, as these were mostly written by others) and dropping a few other less great tracks, it would be possible to make a single CD of Rutherford’s best work with Genesis, I decided to expand it to two CDs as I did with Banks, though in this case it was easy to fit everything with some room to spare. For his solo career, I picked a few highlights and representative tracks, but since I don’t have all of the albums he did (such as the last several Mike and the Mechanics CDs) and those I do have I’m not thoroughly familiar with, I no doubt missed a few worthwhile songs.

The Best of Mike Rutherford with Genesis

The Cinema Show (opening section) (Music: Rutherford[opening section], Banks/Rutherford/Collins[instrumental section]; Lyrics: Rutherford/Banks)
More Fool Me (Rutherford/Collins)
Back in N.Y.C. (Music: Rutherford[main riff]/Banks/Collins/Hackett)
Ripples (Music: Rutherford/Banks; Lyrics: Rutherford)
Squonk (Music: Rutherford/Banks; Lyrics: Rutherford)
Your Own Special Way (Rutherford)
Snowbound (Rutherford)
Deep in the Motherlode (Rutherford)
Say It’s Alright Joe (Rutherford)
Follow You Follow Me (Music: Rutherford/Banks/Collins; Lyrics: Rutherford)

Turn It On Again (Music: Rutherford/Banks/Collins; Lyrics: Rutherford)
Man of Our Times (Rutherford)
Alone Tonight (Rutherford)
Open Door (Rutherford)
Like It Or Not (Rutherford)
Taking It All Too Hard (Music: Rutherford/Banks/Collins; Lyrics: Rutherford)
Just a Job to Do (Music: Rutherford/Banks/Collins; Lyrics: Rutherford)
Land of Confusion (Music: Banks/Collins/Rutherford; Lyrics: Rutherford)
Throwing It All Away (Music: Rutherford/Banks/Collins; Lyrics: Rutherford)
Dreaming While You Sleep (Music: Banks/Collins/Rutherford; Lyrics: Rutherford)
Calling All Stations (Music: Banks/Rutherford; Lyrics: Rutherford)
The Dividing Line (Music: Banks/Rutherford; Lyrics: Rutherford)


Mike Rutherford Solo and with Mike and the Mechanics
(Tracks 1 to 4 performed by Mike Rutherford; Tracks 5-11 performed by Mike and the Mechanics)

Moonshine (Rutherford)
At the End of the Day (Rutherford)
Halfway There (Palmer/Rutherford)
Hideaway (Rutherford)
Silent Running (Rutherford/Robertson)
All I Need Is a Miracle (Rutherford/Neil)
The Living Years (Rutherford/Robertson)
Word of Mouth (Rutherford/Neil)
Over My Shoulder (Rutherford/Carrack)
Another Cup of Coffee (Rutherford/Neil)
Now That You've Gone (Rutherford/Carrack)

Honorable Mentions: Time and Time Again, Acting Very Strange, Couldn't Get Arrested, Taken In, Beggar on a Beach of Gold

Farrokh Bulsara, aka Freddie Mercury of Queen

Farrokh Bulsara, better known as Freddie Mercury, was born on September 5, 1946 on the island of Zanzibar, a British territory in East Africa. His parents were Indians of Parsi descent; the Parsis were Zoroastrians originating in Iran, though from photos of the Bulsaras, including the young Farrokh, I think it is safe to say they also had some non-Iranian Indian ancestry as well, as they look at least as much like typical Indians as Iranians. In any event, Bulsara went to school in his parents’ ancestral home in Gujarat, India, where his grandmother and aunt lived, and absorbed local music as typified by Bollywood film music in addition to Western rock and roll. At school he learned piano and joined his first band, the Hectics, a rock and roll cover band which he formed with several of his classmates (he was the band’s pianist, not its vocalist, as apparently he did not at the time have the self-confidence necessary to be out in front). It was also at school that he acquired the nickname Freddie, which he would use for the rest of his life.

When Bulsara was 17 his family moved to England in the wake of the Zanzibar Revolution. As an art student in London, he joined several bands as vocalist, including Ibex (later called Wreckage) and Sour Milk Sea. He also met Tim Staffell, the vocalist of Smile, and through him the group’s guitarist and drummer, Brian May and Roger Taylor. When Staffell quit, Bulsara persuaded May and Taylor to form a new band with him, which he named Queen. He himself started to use the surname Mercury, and it was as Freddie Mercury that he went on to become one of the best known rock vocalists in history.

As a vocalist, Freddie Mercury was widely recognized as one of the best in rock music, due to both the range and the power of his voice. Unlike many other singers, his falsetto was not overly thin, and so sounded better than average. But while a lot of rock fans tend to equate good singing with singing high notes, something that Mercury certainly did well, his ability to sing low and with great power was if anything more outstanding. In concert, due to worries about damaging his throat, he would usually not sing the high notes that he sang on record, but his live vocal performances remained very impressive regardless, certainly more so than the vast majority of other singers in rock, and when combined with his powerful stage presence, it is no surprise that few others could match him as a live performer. As for his instrumental abilities, in Queen’s early years, he was the group’s primary keyboardist. Though he himself was supposedly dismissive of his skill on the piano, his playing on tracks like “The March of the Black Queen”, “Love of My Life”, "The Millionaire Waltz" and “My Melancholy Blues” is, at least to my admittedly untrained ear, excellent. He only played guitar on record on one song, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” (on this song, he also played guitar in concert), but he wrote one or two others on guitar, including “Ogre Battle”, and he wrote many guitar lines on piano.

In Queen’s first decade, Freddie Mercury was the band’s most prolific songwriter, writing slightly more than Brian May and far more than Roger Taylor or bassist John Deacon in terms of total number of songs, as well as composing more of the group’s hits than all the others put together. He was also the group’s most eclectic writer, composing in a wide variety of styles. The group’s biggest hit in the UK, “Bohemian Rhapsody”, a mix of ballad, opera and hard rock that is still considered their magnum opus and is often voted best song of all time in UK music polls, was entirely Mercury’s work. Among the group’s other big hits from their first eight albums, he also wrote the sports stadium favorite “We Are the Champions” (originally paired on record with Queen’s other big sports anthem, Brian May’s “We Will Rock You”), the gospel-style “Somebody to Love”, the rockabilly “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” (Queen’s first American chart-topper), the vaudeville-tinged “Killer Queen” and “Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy”, and the playful “Bicycle Race” and “Don’t Stop Me Now”. As for album tracks, he wrote the highly complex “The March of the Black Queen”, centerpiece to the second side of Queen II, all of which was written by Mercury; ballads like “Love of My Life”, “Nevermore” and “Lily of the Valley”; the music hall/vaudeville songs like “Seaside Rendezvous”, rockers like “Ogre Battle”, “Death on Two Legs” and “Flick of the Wrist”, the classical-style track “The Millionaire Waltz”, the lounge jazz-style song “My Melancholy Blues” and the Middle Eastern-flavored “Mustapha”, along with many other songs.

In the 1980s, Mercury’s share of the songwriting for Queen shrank considerably, with the other members writing as much or more than he did. He still wrote a number of excellent tracks such as “It’s a Hard Life” and “I’m Going Slightly Mad” (the latter, like all tracks on the albums The Miracle and Innuendo, was credited to the group as a whole) and was according to various sources the main writer on collaborations like “Friends Will Be Friends”, “Was It All Worth It” and “Innuendo”. He also made key contributions to songs written primarily by others in the group. In addition, in1985 he released a solo album called Mr. Bad Guy (two of the best tracks on this album, “Made in Heaven” and “I Was Born to Love You”, were later reworked by the other members of Queen for the posthumous album Made in Heaven), in 1987 he released an excellent cover of “The Great Pretender” (his biggest solo hit in his lifetime), and in 1988 he released Barcelona, an album he recorded with opera singer Montserrat Caballé (this album, featuring some of his best solo songs, was largely co-written with keyboardist Mike Moran). He also sang songs on a couple of soundtracks and produced or sang on some tracks by other artists. Unbeknownst to the public, by the time of the release of Queen’s 1989 album The Miracle, Mercury was already ill with AIDS, and by the time of the release of Innuendo in early 1991 his condition was already quite serious, as is apparent from the videos featuring new footage of the band made for that album. He continued to record in the following months, until it became impossible for him to do so. On November 23 he issued a statement confirming that he had AIDS, and the next day he died. Several years after his death, in 1995, the rest of the band released a final album called Made in Heaven, which included Mercury’s last composition “A Winter’s Tale” and his last recording “Mother Love” (written by May with help from Mercury) in addition to several reworked older recordings, such as the Mercury solo tracks mentioned above. Since then, a number of demos and incomplete recordings by Mercury have been released, and it is reported that May and Taylor are polishing up some of Mercury’s demos (whether ones that have been released or others is not clear) for release on a new album in the near future.

As noted above, Mercury was the most eclectic songwriter in Queen, covering a wide variety of genres. He was particularly strong as a composer, with a good gift for melody and harmonics. Lyrics were not his strong point, as most of the songs he wrote were by his own admission fairly disposable and not very deep, though few of his lyrics were truly awkward and some were quite good. Even when his lyrics were relatively weak, the music often overcame this deficiency, a case in point being “The March of the Black Queen”, which has pretty nonsensical lyrics but great music. In any case, Mercury’s voice was such that he could almost have sung the phone book, as they say, and gotten away with it. That might be a slight exaggeration, but he could usually make an average song sound good and a good song sound great. Still, like the other members of Queen, he did his best work with the band. Mr. Bad Guy has some good songs but also quite a few that are at best mediocre. Barcelona is much better, but is less of a pure solo effort, as he was collaborating with others in both the songwriting and the performing. In any case, it is for the songs he produced with May, Taylor and Deacon, particularly those from the 1970s when his songwriting was at its peak, that he will be remembered.

The following is a list of 30 of Mercury’s best compositions. It is drawn from songs that are credited solely to Mercury or, for later songs that were credited to Queen, are known to have been written nearly entirely by him. In addition to a short list of honorable mentions, I have appended a short list of some of the best songs that Mercury co-wrote with others. I should emphasize that if a song doesn’t appear here, this doesn’t mean I dislike it, just that I think the other songs are better (in some cases only slightly so). For that matter, I might feel differently if I were to do the list again another time (in particular, I like several of the "honorable mentions" just as much as some of the songs that made the main list, but I had narrow it down somehow).

The Best of Freddie Mercury
(All songs written by Freddie Mercury and performed by Queen except where otherwise noted)
My Fairy King
Ogre Battle
The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke
Nevermore
The March of the Black Queen
Seven Seas of Rhye (credited to Mercury, but May helped with the music)
Killer Queen
Flick of the Wrist
Lily of the Valley
In the Lap of the Gods (Revisited)
Death on Two Legs
Seaside Rendezvous
Love of My Life
Bohemian Rhapsody
The Millionaire Waltz
Somebody to Love
Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy
We Are the Champions
My Melancholy Blues
Mustapha
Bicycle Race
Let Me Entertain You
Don’t Stop Me Now
Crazy Little Thing Called Love
Life Is Real
It’s a Hard Life
Princes of the Universe
I’m Going Slightly Mad (Credited to Queen)
Made in Heaven (First recorded by Mercury, later re-recorded by Queen)
I Was Born to Love You (First recorded by Mercury, later re-recorded by Queen)

Honorable Mentions: Great King Rat, Funny How Love Is, In the Lap of the Gods, Big Bad Leroy Brown, Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon, Get Down Make Love, Jealousy, Play the Game, Staying Power, Man on the Prowl, Keep Passing the Open Windows, There Must Be More to Life Than This (Freddie Mercury solo), Living On My Own (Freddie Mercury solo), Delilah (Credited to Queen), A Winter’s Tale (Credited to Queen)

Notable Collaborations
(All songs performed by Queen except where otherwise noted)
Is This the World We Created (Music mostly by May, lyrics mostly by Mercury)
Friends Will Be Friends (Mercury/John Deacon)
The Miracle (Mercury with Deacon, May and Taylor)
Was It All Worth It (Music: Mercury with May, lyrics: Mercury/Taylor/May/Deacon)
Innuendo (Music: Mercury [melody and middle section] and May/Deacon/Taylor [basic backing track], lyrics: Taylor/Mercury)
Bijou (Mercury/May)
Barcelona (Mercury/Mike Moran; recorded by Mercury and Montserrat Caballé)
Exercises in Free Love (Mercury/Mike Moran; recorded by Mercury and Montserrat Caballé)
The Golden Boy (Mercury/Moran/Tim Rice; recorded by Mercury and Montserrat Caballé)
How Can I Go On (Mercury/Moran; recorded by Mercury and Montserrat Caballé)

John Deacon of Queen

Last month saw the birthdays of Brian May and Roger Taylor of Queen; this month, on August 19, the group’s bassist John Deacon turned 61. Deacon was the last member of the group to join, May, Taylor and Freddie Mercury having tried out a number of other bassists before recruiting Deacon. In addition to his bass-playing ability, his skill with electronics (which he earned a degree in) quickly proved useful to the band, and he also ended up handling a lot of the group’s financial matters. On bass, he contributed some highly melodic playing to both his own songs and those written by other members of the band. While bass was his main instrument, he also was a good guitarist, playing the instrument on a number of his own compositions. Brian May pointed out that on “Another One Bites the Dust”, it was Deacon who played the fast strummed guitar, and when May played the part in concert, it was one of the more difficult parts he had to play. Deacon also occasionally played some keyboards, most notably electric piano on “You’re My Best Friend”.

John Deacon was the last member of Queen to start composing for the group, with his first composition, “Misfire”, appearing on Sheer Heart Attack (released in 1974), the group’s third album. For the next three albums, he (like Roger Taylor) wrote one song apiece, before both he and Taylor started contributing two songs per album for the rest of the 1970s and into the 1980s. “You’re My Best Friend”, his contribution to Queen’s fourth album A Night at the Opera (released in 1975), was a top 10 hit in the UK, even though it was only his second song for the group (Roger Taylor didn’t have any hit singles for Queen until the 1980s). “Spread Your Wings”, from 1977’s News of the World, was also a minor hit. Like Taylor, Deacon was contributing equally in terms of songwriting by the early 1980s, writing songs such as “Another One Bites the Dust”, a No. 1 hit in the US, and “I Want to Break Free”, a big hit worldwide. He also collaborated frequently with Freddie Mercury, the two of them writing songs like “Cool Cat”, “Friends Will Be Friends”, “Pain Is So Close to Pleasure”, “Rain Must Fall” and “My Baby Does Me” (by some accounts, they were also the primary writers on “The Miracle”, though Mercury contributed the most and the other two also helped). In addition to these songs, Deacon wrote the bass line hook that opens the UK No. 1 collaboration between Queen and David Bowie “Under Pressure” – and so also the sample on which Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” was based (interestingly, Taylor said that after Deacon had come up with the bass line, they and Bowie took a break, after which Deacon had forgotten it; fortunately Taylor remembered it). Deacon’s songs were mostly melodic pop rock or funk, with a strong influence from black American music apparent in much of his writing.

Although he wrote many songs for the group, including a number of big hits, John Deacon was the only member of Queen who never sang on record, and for that matter rarely in concert (and his microphone was kept at low volume on such occasions). This may not mean he was a particularly terrible singer, just that his singing ability couldn’t match that of the other three, who were all quite good (and in Mercury’s case exceptionally so), though he himself said “I can't sing; it's the one thing I wish I could do, because it would make songwriting so much easier!”. In contrast to the others, particularly Roger Taylor, Deacon also released almost nothing in the way of solo work. He played on a number of songs by other artists and very occasionally produced or co-wrote songs for others, but his only real solo venture was when he formed the band The Immortals to record “No Turning Back”, a song which he co-wrote for a movie soundtrack in 1986.

After Mercury’s death, Deacon worked with the others on the album “Made in Heaven” and played with them on a few other occasions, making his last live appearance in January 1997 with May, Taylor and Elton John performing “The Show Must Go On”, and in October of the same year joining May and Taylor to record May’s song “No-One but You (Only the Good Die Young)”, after which he retired from music. He declined to join May and Taylor in their collaboration with Paul Rodgers, and he didn’t even show for their induction into The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, but he is said to still be in contact with the others (though unsurprisingly there are rumors that their relations are not as warm as is official stated). He evidently doesn’t feel the same irresistible urge to keep performing that May and Taylor do, though his participation in Queen during Mercury’s lifetime was in most respects (except vocals) the equal of the others, even if he was the most reticent in public (he himself said that on one occasion he was too shy to meet Prince Charles and Princess Diana before Live Aid, so he sent a roadie in his place). Still, he seemed largely content with the work he did with Queen, without feeling much need to venture out on his own. It is also possible that since in some ways Mercury was closest to him in musical tastes (aside from the songs they wrote together, supposedly it was Mercury’s support that helped overcome the others’ reservations about “Another One Bites the Dust”), he felt he would be consistently outvoted if he continued to work with May and Taylor, whose tastes lean more to hard rock. Regardless, he can certainly look back with pride on what he accomplished as a member of Queen.

The following is a list of John Deacon’s most notable songs with Queen – in fact if the “honorable mentions” are included it has all the songs solely credited to him. It includes a couple for which Freddie Mercury received a co-writing credit but which by several (admittedly vague and secondhand) accounts were mainly Deacon’s work, at least in terms of the music. It also includes one song that was credited to Queen but according to several reasonable credible sources was written by Deacon (this song, "My Life Has Been Saved", was originally a B-side to a single off 1989's The Miracle and was later reworked for 1995's Made in Heaven).

The Best of John Deacon (as performed by Queen)

You’re My Best Friend
You and I
Spread Your Wings
Who Needs You
In Only Seven Days
Another One Bites the Dust
Need Your Loving Tonight
Cool Cat (Written with Mercury)
I Want to Break Free
One Year of Love
Pain Is So Close to Pleasure (Written with Mercury)
My Life Has Been Saved (Credited to Queen)

Honorable Mentions: Misfire, If You Can't Beat Them, Back Chat, Rain Must Fall (Written with Mercury, credited to Queen)

Album Review – Rings Around the World by the Super Furry Animals

Album Title: Rings Around the World
Artist: Super Furry Animals
Release Date: July 23, 2001

Alternate Route to Vulcan Street
Sidewalk Serfer Girl
(Drawing) Rings Around the World
It's Not the End of the World?
Receptacle for the Respectable
[A] Touch Sensitive
Shoot Doris Day
Miniature
No Sympathy
Juxtapozed with U
Presidential Suite
Run! Christian, Run!
Fragile Happiness

All songs written by Super Furry Animals

It may seem from the artists I have mentioned in my blog so far (the Beatles, Queen, Randy Newman, Bob Dylan, Genesis, the Police, etc.) that I am stuck in the past as far as my musical tastes are concerned. There is some truth to this, for a number of reasons, e.g., I have been living in Asia since the mid 1990s and so get a little less exposure to new artists in the English-speaking world, I am interested in music history and so tend to look back more than forward, and I get enough variety in my listening pleasure out of all the older artists I listen to, so I can’t really be bothered to investigate newer artists. But there are a number of newer – or at least post-1990 – artists that I listen to, such as Radiohead, Muse, the White Stripes, Shakira, Amy Whitehouse and Outkast, just to name a few. One of my favorite (relatively) recent artists is the Welsh band Super Furry Animals. They are one of the few who I have liked sufficiently to make an effort to collect nearly all of their albums.

One thing that is interesting about the Super Furry Animals is that there is no real consensus among fans and critics as to which is their greatest – or most important or most significant – album. In this sense they are more like, say, Genesis than Queen, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan or the Beatles, all of whom have one or a few albums which are almost universally cited as their best. For SFA, as they are sometimes called, several albums have been called both their best album and their worst by different reviewers (opinions of Genesis albums, particularly the 1980s ones, are similarly varied). I myself like all of their albums to one degree or another, and I would have trouble picking one as my favorite. So for my first SFA review, I will just do the first CD of theirs I bought, their 2001 album Rings Around the World.

Rings Around the World was the Super Furry Animals’ fifth studio album, but it was their first on a major label. Several publications called it “near perfect” or their “best album to date”, though NME said it was “their worst”, even if that still meant it was better than a lot of other bands’ work, and Allmusic, despite a generally positive review, considered it less inventive than their previous albums. It was chosen by Mojo as the best album of 2001, which is where I first heard of it (and the band). My curiosity sparked by the Mojo review, I download MP3s of a few of the tracks off a P2P service. I liked them a lot, and so I went out and bought the CD (incidentally proving that music sharing can actually increase music sales – I wouldn’t have bought the CD if I hadn’t been able to download and listen to some songs first). While as I noted above I have since bought most of their other releases, some of which I like at least as much as this album, I still enjoy this one a lot.

As a number of reviewers and SFA themselves have noted, with a major label budget the band could indulge themselves, resulting in an eclectic, glossy production which ran a wide gamut of sounds and styles. While some critics and fan seem to feel the lush production meant the album had less of an edge than some of their independent releases – and I can understand their point of view, as lo-fi albums like Mwng appeal to me just as much as this one – I like complicated productions if they are done well, as I think is the case here. It gives the album a great deal of variety, which is something I always like in music. One of my favorite tracks, “Receptacle for the Respectable”, actually goes from prog rock to melodic pop to death metal in four and a half minutes, and also features Paul McCartney chewing celery in homage to his doing the same on the Beach Boys’ song “Vegetables”. Though no other single songs cover such a wide range in styles, there is still plenty of variety to be found elsewhere on the album. Another standout track, “No Sympathy”, starts out with acoustic guitars and Crosby, Stills and Nash-style harmonies (though it’s hard to imagine CSN singing “you deserve to die-ie-ie-ie…”) and then breaks down into jagged techno. The hit single “Juxtapozed with U”, another track I particularly enjoy listening to (though I know some fans of the band don’t care for it), is a very catchy “plastic” soul tune. Influences cited for the title track, “(Drawing) Rings Around the World” (which I also like a lot, though it is perhaps a tad repetitive) include Status Quo, the Beach Boys (clearly a big influence on the album as a whole) and ELO. Other notable tracks include “Presidential Suite”, which has an entertaining set of lyrics about the foibles of Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin attached to a chorus with a great melody, the 1960s pop-style “It's Not the End of the World?”, and the sharply ironic “Run, Christian, Run”.

One of the great strengths of this album, and for that matter of much of the Super Furry Animals’ work, is the strong melodies, most of which are the work of lead singer and chief songwriter Gruff Rhys (though the others have also written some quite melodic tunes, particularly on 2005’s Love Kraft). All of the songs mentioned above have excellent melodies – in fact, all the songs have good melodies, and many have very good if a bit wacky lyrics. The album’s eclecticism helps keep things interesting, especially since you never know when things will take a sudden left turn. On this album in particular SFA's influences are readily apparent, and yet they manage to update and adapt them in a way that sounds fresh. While this may not necessarily be the best or most representative Super Furry Animals’ album, I can attest to the fact that it’s a good place to start.

Note: I didn’t attempt to do a song-by-song review this time around, though maybe some day I’ll come back and tack one on.

Roger Taylor of Queen

Last week, Brian May of Queen turned 65. This week is the birthday of his bandmate Roger Meddows Taylor, born July 26, 1949, who is turning 63. May and Taylor are not only the only members of the band to remain active – Mercury died in 1991 and Deacon retired in 1997 – but they were also the first two to start playing together, starting in 1968 when Taylor joined Smile, the group started by May and Tim Staffell. So May and Taylor have been playing together off and on for well over 40 years, and judging from recent appearances they’ve made, they still enjoy doing so.

Like May, Freddie Mercury, and John Deacon, Taylor was not only highly skilled in his chief instrument, but he could play several others, including guitar and keyboards. Also like May, he sang lead vocals on a number of Queen songs, chiefly ones he wrote himself. In fact, his vocals were featured even more prominently than May’s. Even though he wrote fewer songs in the group’s early days, he sang almost all of the ones he did write, unlike May, who only sang a small proportion of his songs. Furthermore, while both he and May did a lot of the backing vocals, Taylor sang the high harmonies, which gave his voice a prominent role even on songs where lead vocal duties were entirely handled by Freddie Mercury. Examples of this include the high notes on songs like “In the Lap of the Gods” and “Bohemian Rhapsody”. At least one reviewer that I read remarked that Taylor had a better voice than the lead vocalists for many other bands; of course with Freddie Mercury available, he didn’t use it as often as he might otherwise have.

Taylor was also a talented songwriter. In fact, Queen is one of very few groups in which every member wrote hit songs for the group. As I noted in my article on Brian May, in the group’s early years, the songwriting was dominated by May and Mercury. Taylor wrote at least one song on each album from the beginning (unlike John Deacon, whose first composition appeared on Queen’s third album), but it wasn’t until the late 1970s that he (and Deacon) started writing two songs per album. Also, though Taylor wrote some excellent album tracks such as “Tenement Funster”, “Drowse” and “Sheer Heart Attack”, he didn’t write any of the group’s hit singles (though he did famously get his “I’m in Love with My Car” onto the B side of “Bohemian Rhapsody”, thus earning a lot of royalties). But in the 1980s, Taylor was writing as much as Mercury or May – sometimes even more – including hits such as “Radio Ga Ga” (the song that Lady Gaga got her name from), “A Kind of Magic”, “The Invisible Man”, “Breakthru” (except for the opening section, written by Mercury) and “Heaven For Everyone” (though this song was originally written for his band The Cross and only later reworked for release by Queen). He was the main writer of Queen’s holiday song “Thank God It’s Christmas” (with some help from May) and he was the primary lyricist on the hits “One Vision” and “Innuendo”. He also wrote the hit single “C-lebrity” from the Queen + Paul Rodgers collaboration, as well as the album's other single, "Say It's Not True". In fact, Taylor wrote or was at least one of the main writers of the title track and/or lead single for all but one of Queen's albums starting with 1984's The Works (though I should note that on his first two hits, "Radio Ga Ga" and "A Kind of Magic", Mercury helped to polish the songs to bring out their hit potential). There was a noticeable change in Taylor’s songwriting style in the 1980s when he started using keyboards to compose, as the resulting songs were often very different from the guitar-based songs he wrote in the 1970s (though he continued to compose on guitar in the 1980s and afterwards). Like May, Taylor occasionally has addressed social and political issues in his lyrics, such as on “One Vision”, “Heaven for Everyone” and “Say It’s Not True”, as well as some of his solo tracks.

Taylor also has had the most prolific solo career of any of the members of Queen. He has released four solo albums and a long-delayed fifth one is supposedly nearing release (a single from it was released back in 2009). In the late 1980s, he also formed a band called The Cross in which he played rhythm guitar and sang lead vocals, and he wrote almost all the songs on their first album, though he contributed much less to their second and third albums. None of the other members of Queen released nearly as much solo material (unless the 10-CD Freddie Mercury box set is included, but most of that consisted of demos and unfinished material). However, except for a few songs here and there, I haven’t heard much of Taylor’s solo material, so my list of his best songs (including a few which others had a hand in writing, but Taylor wrote the vast majority of) is taken from his work with Queen, including the Queen + Paul Rodgers collaboration between Taylor, May and vocalist Paul Rodgers. In the future I may do an updated list incorporating some of his best solo tracks.

The Best of Roger Taylor
(All songs written by Roger Taylor and performed by Queen except where otherwise noted)
Tenement Funster (Lead vocals by Taylor)
I'm in Love with My Car (Lead vocals by Taylor)
Drowse (Lead vocals by Taylor)
Sheer Heart Attack
Fun It (Lead vocals by Taylor and Mercury)
Rock It (Prime Jive) (Lead vocals by Taylor, except opening section sung by Mercury)
Action This Day (Lead vocals on some lines by Taylor)
Radio Ga Ga
Thank God It's Christmas (Written with assistance from May)
A Kind of Magic
Breakthru (Intro written by Mercury)
These Are the Days of Our Lives
Heaven for Everyone (First recorded by the Cross, later re-recorded by Queen; lead vocals on Cross single version by Taylor)
C-lebrity (Queen+Paul Rodgers)
Say It’s Not True (Queen+Paul Rodgers; lead vocals by Taylor, May and Rodgers)

Modern Times Rock 'n' Roll (Lead vocals by Taylor), Coming Soon (Lead vocals on some lines by Taylor), The Invisible Man (Lead vocals on some lines by Taylor), Small