I recently bought the “Styx: Caught in the Act” DVD from a sale at a department store. The videos took me back to the 80s, enjoying songs I had not heard in twenty years. The nostalgia so overtook me that I searched my old albums still stored in my parents’ basement.
I selected a few of the Styx records and replayed them on my turntable. The album that most impressed me was Pieces of Eight, which contained the hits “Renegade” and “Blue Collar Man.” One tune on the record, “Queen of Spades,” sounded particularly sharp, even after all these years.
It also inspired me to think of other songs with titles that contained the word queen. Obviously the famous band with that particular moniker made the list, but there were some nearly-forgotten songs that fit the category as well.
10. Queen of Denial” by Pam Tillis: I was unfamiliar with the daughter of country music legend Mel Tillis until I saw the video for this song on VH1 years ago. I love the pun in the title and the way Tillis develops it with her Egyptian garb in the video.
9. “Queen of Hearts” by Juice Newton: The rhythm is what is most memorable about this pop tune with a country feel. It would make a good companion for the Styx song mentioned earlier. It makes me wonder if there are songs dedicated to the female monarch of diamonds and clubs as well.
8. Ballad of a Teenage Queen” by Johnny Cash: When you hear the lyrics, it seems a quite predictable love song. The teenage knockout is pursued by every guy in town, but she stays loyal to the boy who works in the candy store. Then she goes to Hollywood and scores worldwide fame. What makes this country song unusual, though, is that it doesn’t end there. In the last verse Cash sings of how the movie starlet then gives up all the wealth and fame to return to the boy in the candy store. Thus the song is a rarity: a traditional country song with a happy ending.
7. “Dancing Queen” by Abba: This song was about as close to disco as Abba would ever get. The combination of the female vocals in the chorus is alluring, though I still am not certain whether they are frowning at or admiring the dancing queen.
6. “Death Valley Queen” by Flogging Molly: This Celtic band sound like a combination of The Pogues and The Clash. This song is probably their best from the
Drunken Lullabies album. The heavy Irish vocal describes a man’s yearnings for the girl who refused his kiss. He never gets her, but the song does have one of the most intriguing lines in music so far this century: “Laying cold in the bed with a whale for a head.”
5. “Mississppi Queen” by Mountain: This is the song that identifies the band led by Leslie West. It opens with a great guitar riff before West’s voice bursts into “Mississippi Queen, You know what I mean.”
4. Acid Queen” by Tina Turner: This song provided one of the highlights from The Who’s rock opera Tommy. I can still see Daltrey as the blind, deaf and dumb boy being taken to Turner to be cured. She, as the Acid Queen, locks him in this metal box, injecting him with needles and transforming him into snakes and all sorts of terrifying images.
3. “The Queen Is Dead” by The Smiths: The title track from the last great Smiths album has the same qualities as the band’s other classics: riveting melodies, clever lyrics, morbid self-pitying, and some very funny images. Morrissey, the singer and lyricist, pokes fun at an imagined scene where he breaks into the Queen’s home: “She says I know you and you cannot sing, I said that’s nothing you should hear me play piano.”
2. Killer Queen” by Queen: This was the band’s first big hit, though its success was soon diminished a year later when they released its behemoth, “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Still, “Killer Queen” has the slick guitar for which Brian May has become recognized, and the operatic backing vocals that distinguish Queen. I still look back on the Sheer Heart Attack album with fondness, for I sensed that Queen would become something special, even a year before the multi-platinum
A Night at the Opera.
1. Queen Jane Approximately” by Bob Dylan: This song is one of the many classics from Highway 61 Revisited. The lyrics have that special witty anger that defined Dylan’s folk-rock recordings. He puts Jane down in all five verses, predicting that she will fall and become friendless and poor. In spite of the pleasure he seems to get from the misery she will encounter, Dylan ends each verse with the plea, “Won’t you come see me, Queen Jane?”
