‘Don’t Stop Me Now’: Is there tragedy behind Queen’s euphoria?

It would take one hell of a prude to have a problem with ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’. It’s one of the most beloved Queen songs from a back catalogue almost entirely made up of beloved songs. It’s an expression of pure, energised joy straight from the pen of a man who endured so much pain. It’s basically the one thing everyone in the UK can agree on. Yet there was someone who would look at that song and tut.

And the man who wrote and sang that song, Freddie Mercury, was in a band with the person looking at that song and tutting. In an interview with Absolute Radio conducted in 2011, Queen guitarist Brian May opened up about his mixed feelings towards the song and how, during the time Mercury was writing about, May was deeply worried for his friend’s safety.

He said: “I thought it was a lot of fun, but I did have an undercurrent feeling of, ‘aren’t we talking about danger here,’ because we were worried about Freddie at this point. That feeling lingers, but it’s become almost the most successful Queen track as regards to what people play in their car or at their weddings. It’s become a massive, massive track and an anthem to people who want to be hedonistic. It was kind of a stroke of genius from Freddie.”

I mean, he’s right about the whole “stroke of genius” part. While I think he can be factually correct about the rest of it, this speaks to a deeper problem I’ve had with the entire Queen enterprises’ take on Freddie since his passing. In short, there’s something truly insidious in the way that Mercury’s behaviour has been singled out when really, the only difference between him and any other rock star of the 1980s is his sexuality.

Why would Queen have a problem with ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’?

In the same decade, John Deacon was fined £150 and banned from driving for a year after being breathalysed for drunk driving. That’s a much more direct act of putting yourself and others in grave danger, and with the way he was reported to have been drinking in the 1980s, it was also probably not the only time he’d done it. Is that grounds for a public finger-wagging and stern talking to from Brian May? Apparently not.

Outside of his band, you had the heyday of groups like Mötley Crüe, who barely went a single night without snorting, injecting, drinking and fucking everything in sight. One can’t imagine they were being particularly safe about anything. Yet, that’s basically the only thing anyone celebrates the band for, or even remembers them for in the year of our lord 2025.

One may think I’m reading too far into this. May was famously well-behaved for a rock star, and it does clearly come from a place of love and care. However, to me, everything comes back to the biopic Bohemian Rhapsody. The project, one produced by Brian May and Roger Taylor, frames Mercury as little more than a child, distracted by base pleasures while his saintly bandmates plead for him to come back to their healing, heterosexual light.

It’s not the first time that a gay man has been infantilised and scolded by well-meaning straights, but it is one of the most high-profile. To me, it’s the kind of patronising attitude that permeates the criticism of ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’. The idea that the song is nothing more than a celebration of doing truckloads of drugs and bottoming for men who stepped straight out of a Tom of Finland illustration without protection is ludicrous.

It is a misunderstanding of the song at best, and a diminishing of it at worst. It’s a celebration of living freely and not being ashamed of the pleasure and fun that comes from that. Y’know, the kind of celebration that straight people indulge in all the bloody time.