15 September 2011
Newsdesk
Feel-good lyric from ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ is the greatest according to Queen fans in Island Records and HMV 40th anniversary online poll .
A huge 1-in-5 of the 3,000 Queen fans who voted in a joint Island Records/HMV survey held in August to mark the band’s 40th anniversary (http://www.queenonline.com), have selected the line “Don’t stop me now, I’m having such a good time, I’m having a ball….” – from the song ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’, as their choice of the greatest-ever Queen lyric.
Penned by Freddie Mercury, and featured as the twelfth track on the band’s 1978 album ‘Jazz’, ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ was released as a single on 26th January 1979 – reaching no.9 in the Official UK Charts. Whilst, perhaps, viewed at the time as one of the lesser works in the Queen canon, the song has grown in stature over the years – popularised by frequent use in TV and film advertising and programming, no doubt keen to draw on its upbeat sentiments, and is now a firm favourite among fans around the world.
The lyric will now be celebrated in a special 'our inspiration' version of HMV's acclaimed 'my inspiration'
brand campaign, which launched in September 2006 when David Bowie selected a line from Syd Barrett's 'Gigolo Aunt' as the song lyric that has most inspired him. Since then well over 250 artists have taken part with their own lyric choices, including such icons as Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Beyonce and Lady Gaga. The Our Inspiration campaign will coincide with the final instalment, on September 5th, of Queen album re-issues, which have been remastered and released across 2011 to celebrate the group’s anniversary landmark. September 5th 2011 is doubly significant as it would have been Freddie’s 65th birthday.
Coming in second in the poll, which was run by www.pollthepeople.com on behalf of Island Records and HMV, with just over 10% of the popular vote, is the poignant lyric from ‘The Show Music Go On’ – “My soul is painted like the wings of butterflies, fairy tales of yesterday will grow but never die. I can fly my friends!”. Featuring on the 1991 album ‘Innuendo’ and released as a single in October of that year – just six weeks before Freddie was to pass away, the song is credited to Queen but was mainly written by Brian May. It peaked at no.16 and spent ten weeks in the upper reaches of the charts.
Third favourite is the line from the title track to the 1991 album ‘Innuendo’ – “You can be anything you want to be, just turn yourself into anything you think you could ever be”, which garnered over 4% of the votes, whilst fourth is the famous lyric that closes ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ – “Nothing really matters, anyone can see, nothing really matters, nothing really matters to me”, which attracted just under 4% of all responses. Making up the top 5 is the line “In the quiet of the night let our candle always burn, let us never lose the lessons we have learned” from ‘Teo Torriatte (Let Us Cling Together)’ – the 1976 song from the album ‘A Day At The Races’, which memorably also features a Japanese verse in its chorus.
The remainder of the survey top 10 features lyrics from the songs ‘We Are The Champions’, ‘Killer Queen’, ‘Friends Will Be Friends’, ‘Tie You Mother Down’ and ‘Stone Cold Crazy’. See Notes To Editors.
