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I agree with a lot of what you said, but this just seems flatly untrue. They were a hugely commercially successful act with their classic lineup and remained so for decades afterwards, with greatest hits compilations still topping UK charts as recently as 2022. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, fifteen years before Bohemian Rhapsody came out. "Bohemian Rhapsody" was voted the UK's favourite single of all time in 2002. Their Live Aid performance in 1985 was widely considered the greatest live performance ever decades before Bohemian Rhapsody came out. They've been directly cited as an influence by everyone from Judas Priest and Megadeth to Radiohead and Katy Perry.
Bohemian Rhapsody didn't create this myth - the film exists as a direct result of it.
The thing is, though, there are a lot of bands like that. I should also emphasize the difference between Queen's stature in the UK and Europe vs. North America; they were always popular here but never had the kind of mega-popularity they enjoyed across the pond. The best analog I can think of is a group like the Eagles. They're played on the radio constantly, they had a ton of big hits in both the US and the UK but were always more popular in America, were inducted into the Hall, had a massive reunion tour in the mid-'90s, etc. Their critical stature is higher than that of Queen, but both groups were critical whipping boys in their day whose stature has improved over time. Looking at the VH1 100 Greatest bands list from 1998, Queen ranks at 33 and the Eagles at 23. Rolling Stone's 2010 list of greatest artists has Queen at 52 and the Eagles at 75. Rolling Stone's 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums had two entries from the Eagles, Hotel California at 37 and Eagles at 374. Queen's lone entry was A Night at the Opera, at 230. When Rolling Stone did the list again in 2020 it had Hotel California at 118, Eagles at 207, and A Night at the Opera at 128. To be fair, when VH1 redid their list in 2010 Queen jumped to 17 and the Eagles dropped off the list entirely, but it should be noted that this was after the point when VH1 had burned most of their credibility in the music world and emphasized more pop-oriented acts — Michael Jackson jumped from 40 to 2, Madonna jumped from 86 to 16, and George Michael (!) entered the top 100.
Now, I prefer the Eagles to Queen and they have (slightly) more critical credibility. For all intents and purposes, I'll consider it a draw. The difference is that I don't hear anyone trying to argue that the Eagles are among the top 5 greatest bands of all time, especially not 20-year-old zoomers who aren't so much as arguing it as much as stating it as though it were an accepted fact among anyone familiar with rock music. To be fair, they are very different bands representing very different tastes, but the popularity of country music (particularly pop country) in the United States suggests no reason why the Eagles shouldn't enjoy a similar reputation, especially considering that a lot of the country I hear on the radio descends more from what they did than from what e.g. Willie Nelson or Tammy Wynette did. The answer seems obvious to me: Movies. Not necessarily Bohemian Rhapsody, but earlier. The most notable movie moment for Queen prior to that biopic was the scene from Wayne's World where they were singing Bohemian Rhapsody in the car, which was incorporated into a new music video that was played on MTV and helped the song hit the charts again in the US. The best known movie moment for the Eagles is from The Big Lebowski when The Dude tells the taxi driver that he's had a long night and hates the fucking Eagles. Ever since that movie achieved cult status in the early '00s it's been cool to slag on the Eagles. Meanwhile, Queen, a group who by all means should enjoy a similar stature, gets treated as if they're up there with the true greats. Bohemian Rhapsody (the movie) only took this cool/uncool dichotomy a step further, by cementing their legacy through a largely fictional account of their history. I can't speak for Europe, but over here, there was definitely a marked change in how younger people treated this band after the film came out.
If I'm reading you correctly, you're saying that Queen were considered a great band in the UK and Europe for decades before Bohemian Rhapsody came out, but owe that reputation in the US to the release of the film.
Again, this just seems flatly untrue. As previously mentioned they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, "Bohemian Rhapsody", "We Will Rock You" and "We Are the Champions" were added to the Grammy Hall of Fame years prior to the film's release, one of their greatest hits compilations has spent more than 500 weeks in the Billboard top 200.
No, that's not what I'm saying. They were well-regarded in the US, but no one considered them at the absolute top of the pyramid, up there with The Beatles and Stones and Dylan. Not even Led Zeppelin, for that matter (I mean, there were some people, but they were mostly pop fans whose knowledge of rock music was surface-level). Yeah, they were in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but with over 300 inductees it's not exactly an exclusive club. And saying that they have three songs in the Grammy Hall of Fame is like damning with faint praise — I couldn't find anything about "We Will Rock You" or "We Are the Champions" ever being inducted, but A Night at the Opera was inducted in 2018, and even giving them that, they're still shy of Blood, Sweat & Tears, who I don't hear anyone arguing are among the all-time greats. I brought up the Eagles because they're a band whose popularity and critical standing was, by all normal metrics, similar to that of Queen, but who I don't hear anyone claiming was among the top 5 groups of all time. I only brought up the UK because I know they were more popular over there and I don't know if people there have been ranking them to 5 or whatever for longer. I would also note that this is a phenomenon that I see much more among younger people who probably saw the movie when they were at the height of their susceptibility of being influenced music-wise at the time of the film's release. I don't really see too many people my age and older reevaluating their opinions on Queen.
I don't even know what this is supposed to mean. How many rock musicians or groups have there been since the genre came into being? Surely significantly less than 1% (or 0.1%) have made it into the Hall of Fame.
There have been 116 Novel laureates for Literature since the prize's inauguration. Would anyone dispute that this is a very exclusive club, even if it's only one-third as exclusive as the Hall of Fame in terms of raw membership numbers?
I'm saying that in the context of the Queen argument, saying that they are a top 300 band isn't saying much; they've always been considered a top 300 band. I remember a kid on Reddit asking a while back why Bob Dylan was considered a top artist, up there with The Beatles, Queen, and Led Zeppelin. It's the inclusion of Queen into this category that seems new to me. No one in that kid's position would ask the same question with reference to The Dells and The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, who are also in the Hall of Fame. Yes, the Hall is exclusive when talking about the entire corpus of rock music. But it's not that exclusive when talking about bands that achieved a certain degree of commercial success.
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