The Queen song Brian May resented for years: “The injustice”

Queen always knew how to keep things professional in every facet of their career. They certainly had the power to level a small city through the power of their music alone, but whenever it came to them fighting amongst each other, it was understood that the songwriter was the boss of whatever tune they were working on. But when you have four different creative entities working together, it can be much easier for some egos to get bruised when discussing which songs should be singles.

Because as a songwriter, there’s always going to be the musical offspring that you hope will go on to do great things. Every member of the band had the potential to write songs that could light up the charts, but if any of them were focused on too much, it was already going to put strain on a relationship that already involved them struggling to get everything spot-on when they sang their harmonies.

But throughout their history, every member of the band had songs that have reached the hit parade. It’s shocking to see so many of John Deacon’s songs getting on the radio since he qas the most reserved member of the group, but even if Brian May was one of the heavy forces behind their music, it was a lot easier for fans to get behind a song that was as primal as ‘We Will Rock You’ whenever it comes on at any sporting event in the last 40 years.

Even though they were much more adventurous in the 1970s compared to their 1980s material, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ is one of the few songs that shouldn’t work on paper. This kind of medley of tunes that goes through an operatic section and into a heavy riff should have been dead on arrival when it hit the charts, but it stubbornly refuses to take any prisoners, leaving most people dumbfounded when they get through all six minutes of the track.

It needed to be one of the lead singles for ambition alone, but Roger Taylor remembered May resenting the fact that the song ‘I’m In Love With My Car’ was on the B-side, saying, “We were aware of the injustice of ‘I’m in Love With My Car’ making as much money as ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. It was a real sticking point for the band, and it’s good we got through it. I think our sense of humour saved us. How long did it take me to get over it? Oh, quite a while.”

Taylor openly said that May never truly forgave him for having the world’s most profitable B-side, but it’s not like the drummer’s tune is anywhere near the level of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. His voice is in fine form, and the power behind that 6/8 groove is like a waltz if it were done by Zeppelin, but there were enough meatheaded songs being played around that time that the world didn’t really need another one.

But that begs the question: what else could have been the B-side? Tunes like ‘You’re My Best Friend’ was too good to throw on the back end of another single, and it’s not like they would throw the equally ambitious ‘The Prophet’s Song’ on the flipside, but had Taylor not written his own tune, May’s ‘39’ could have been a prime candidate, seeing how it brings things back down to acoustic guitar and voice to calm everyone down from the epic they had just heard.

History may have seen things in a different way, but ‘I’m In Love With My Car’ was still the kind of brash attitude that most people were associating with Queen at the time. They may have been studio lab rats to the point of excess, but this was the kind of tune that could get fans deep into a groove after going on one of the most insane musical thrill rides of their life.