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PD: Where can I find your fantastic investiagtion into the net melody content of Queen songs versus other artists?



Someone brought it up on Queenzone a while back, and it reminded me how great a piece of research it was. It truly helped explain in a scientific way why Queen were so good and underappreciated critically.

1. Sebastian

www.icce.rug.nl



It's indeed one of the most original and informative articles I've seen on the net It's indeed one of the most original and informative articles I've seen on the net

2. PD

That was a time-consuming project, hard to belive it was 5 years ago. For some reason I've never been satisfied with it. I am going to revise it, adding also some thoughts.

3. Bohardy

Cheers Seb.



It truly is an awesome bit of research Denes. I'll have a read through again later when I've got time.



How long did it take to complete?

4. PD

The idea raised up summer 2000. I started the article in december and finished early february. 2-3 months it took me.

5. zaiga

Awesome article! As you note, longer songs will often have a higher melody factor. To put things in perspective, perhaps it's a good idea to include the melody percentage, which would be measured as (melody factor / song length) * 100%.



For example, a song with a melody factor of 50 seconds and a song length of 300 seconds would have a melody percentage of (50/300) * 100% = 16,7%. A song with a melody factor of 20 seconds and a song length of 90 seconds would have a melody percentage of (20/90) * 100% = 22,2%.



This would make it easier to compare long songs with short songs.

6. PD

Good point. The next version will be out soon where I point this unfairness out. Due to my lazyness Im not going to apply this approach for updating the statistics.

For the final version which will be updated at the Soundscapes, I still have to make a countermeasurement which will take probably weeks.

7. PD

Here is the version 3.0.

Before the final update Im going to do an overall re-check of the measured vaues.



Melody repetition and the melody factor in Queen songs





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In the 1970s and 1980s the British rock group Queen scored an impressive number of hits. Freddie Mercury (vocals, keyboard), Brian May (guitar), John Deacon (bass) and Roger Taylor (drums) left their mark upon popular music with songs departing from the standard rock idiom. Their sound was "excessive," but presented with a strong touch of irony and sincerity, and their songs were always very strong in their melodies. This last element has often been overlooked, but is one of the central characteristics of Queen's style and achievement. Compared with other contemporaneous songs, Queen's repertoire shows a huge overdose of melodic content, strengthened yet by a relatively low level of melody repetition. Counting melody lines and their duration D. Pinter introduces us to the Queen anomaly.



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1 Melody repetition. Queen wrote a number of songs that in many ways belong to the most interesting ones you can find listening to radio stations covering both the seventies and eighties. When people list the characteristics of Queen songs, they often point at the catchy melodies, the great vocal harmonies and the guitar orchestrations, and of course, the expressive qualities of Freddie Mercury's voice. Hardly anyone, however, ever mentions that Queen usually wrote less repetitive songs than other artists. This relatively low level of melody repetition, nevertheless, is an important mark of Queen's song repertoire. This article discusses this remarkable anomaly.

Since the very beginnings of music repetition has been a very important element of songs and compositions. The British musicologist Richard Middleton rightfully described music as "the art of iteration." In modern pop music the importance of repetition still has grown because the success of a song depends on the ease with which it can be memorized. Most people memorize songs by the inner vocalizing of  parts of  the lyrics and, more often, by humming melody lines. Therefore, to be successful it is crucial for a song to have at least one catchy melody line or riff. If the melody succeeds in impressing enough people, their sales will push the single up on the charts and their requests will advocate its appearance in shows. The song then will attract more and more listeners and its melodies will be safeguarded in public memory. Lacking really catchy parts a song, of course, still has the chance to be charted if the lyrics are good (rap) or if the video and the promotion are effective enough. As a rule, however, a catchy melody line is a necessary condition for a song's success.

The more times the main tune of a song is repeated, the easier it becomes to memorize it. This is not difficult to understand: think about the way in which people memorize a text by reading it over and over again. If played frequently for months, even "silly" commercial tunes and radio signals can be remembered ten to twenty years afterwards. The same goes for repetitions as iterated melody lines and refrains. Take for instance Steam's song "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" (1969). The catchy refrain is repeated many times throughout the song. Though many people will have forgotten the group's name, they can sing along with the main melody after hearing a few bars. The remainder of the melodies is much less known, probably because it is less catchy and less times repeated. If the refrain  like in many Queen songs  would have been repeated only three or four times, it would have risked its survival in public memory (long term) and its Number 1 position in the US (short term).

This essay concentrates on popular songwriting, but if you look around the classical music you will find that most wellknown pieces (or fragment of them that are most wanted on the ringtone market), you will find that they also usually repeat their main tunes several times. The ones that hardly repeat a motif (including tons of great compostitions) risk to bore the common audience and leaving behind no tunes that one could recall afterwards even right after the listening to it. Great music is not equal to catchy music.

There seems to be a relation between the appreciation of a melody and the number of times it is repeated in a song. And definitely the composers and songwriters also tend to repeat motifs and melodies more times that they think to be catchy.

Beside the rote repetition there are more subtle ways of repetitions. Variant, leitmotif, ostinato, da capo al fine, reprise, these musical trems are also closely related with repetition. The use of chord-progresssion cliches, musical quotes, rip-off are also cases of repetition, where the repeated musical fragment is imported from another composer/songwriter.

The use of repetition exploites the subtle effect that the human ear (usually) likes hearing chords, melodies, rhythms what they expect to come (for example a tonic chord after the dominant seventh chord). Also on the level of lyrics we can find repetitive structures (eg. rhymes) that are often paralelled on musical level (eg. Refrain). The Verses usually dont repeat the lyrics, just the music. Many songwriters and producers (including Queen) kept changing the arrangement of Verses and Choruses) to diminish the boring effect of repetition.

Repetition contributes to how good a melody is thought to be  at first hearing. No wonder the songs that are intended to become instant hit make usually heavy use of it. To the ears of the listeners a many times repeated melody can turn a song into a virtually "better" song. This effect clearly also works for songs as a whole, as more air play can turn a song virtually more catchy. Anyway that's not a bad thing since a virtually good melody is definitely a good melody  at least for some weeks. Still, over-repetition is considered one of the "cheapest" tricks in the book of a songwriter. Queen usually refrained from the over-repetition and this may explain the relatively slow reception of some of their songs, at least in the US. On the other hand they made frequent use of more subtle ways of repetition.

In aspect of Queen chart hits the US market in the 1970s and 1980s seemed to prefer more repetitive compared to the UK market. Three of Queen's more repetitive songs  "We Will Rock You" (1977), "Another One Bites The Dust" (1980), and "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" (1980)  were their most successful songs in the US. Their much less repetitive worldwide hit "Bohemian Rhapsody" (1975), however, only reached a Number 9 position on the US charts in 1976, while more repetitive Number 1 disco hits  "That's The Way (I Like It)" (1975) by KC and the Sunshine Band and "Fly Robin Fly" (1975) by the Silver Convention  set the trend at that time. "Under Pressure", Queen's collaboration with David Bowie, reached a low Number 29 on the US charts in 1982, while the record was a Number 1 hit in the UK. Innuendo had similar story (No1 vs. No). These three songs show that the US single market was not ideal place for Queens non-repetitive songs. The famous riff of "Under Pressure" later on returned in a repetitive context as the sample hook in Vanilla Ice's pop-rap hit "Ice Ice Baby", an US Number 1 in 1990 and also a telling and extreme example of "less is more." In 1992, by the way, "Bohemian Rhapsody" eventually did reach a Number 2 position in the US, when the song was included in the movie "Wayne's World".

Just like "Bohemian Rhapsody" (1975) many other songs of Queen have a low level of melody repetition. We will demonstrate this by adopting two approaches. First we will examine how many times melodies are repeated in a song by listing examples. Next we will measure the "melody factor": the nett melodic content of the lead vocals. The first analysis will give us a rough indication of the amount of melody repetition in Queen songs compared with more or less contemporaneous FM-radio songs. The latter will show in a visual way how much different Queen songs were as compositions in a special and formal way. Keep in mind that these methods, without further analysis of harmony, melody and lyrics, will not tell us  in any direct way  that Queen's compositions were qualitatively better than the songs of other groups or artists. To make things easier, both approaches here will ignore the instrumental parts of the songs. This is an unfair step perse, because instrumental hooks and leads are often the same important parts of songs as the lead vocal itself. Instrumental songs, classical compositions, rap songs and so on, will be kept out of the comparison as they deserve an analysis of their own.

2 Counting verses and refrains. In our first approach we will concentrate on the repetition of verses and refrains. Those are the parts, where FM-Pop songs usually have at least one melody  reaching the length of one bar or one line of lyrics  that is repeated about six to eight times. This format is so common that it can be considered a standard. Above a certain level the repetitions can make a song sound monotonous and boring. However, the experience of monotony depends on many factors: how powerful are the melodies in the remainder of the song; how often is the melody repeated, how many times in a row; how long are the repeated parts altogether, and how frequently can the song be heard? Bands often try to break the monotony with key-shifting, adding improvised parts over the refrain, using altered endings and beginnings and changing the tone of voice, changing. Listen for instance to Free's "All Right Now" (1970), or to the verses of Queen's "Back Chat" (1982).

Repetition, and therefore a certain degree of monotony, can be enjoyable in certain styles, for instance if it fits the mood of the song. Really monotonous songs, however, will become boring very quickly. Still, these songs can survive. Due to the exposure to repetition, years later even one appearance in the air will be enough to refresh the fading memories of the public. The less repetition a given song has, the more its survival will depend on good melodies. Sometimes even a well-composed song can not survive because it's not repetitive enough (beautiful vs. catchy problem). Queen's "Love Of My Life" (1975), for instance, has got very catchy and beautiful melodies and a brilliant arrangement. Still, twenty-five years after its release it is slowly fading away in public memory  at least in Hungary, where I'm living. It shows that the actual survival value of a song sometimes does absolutely not depend on how good the song in question is, but on luck, trends, promotion ... and repetition.

The Queen songs are averagely not very repetitive. Some of them, however, definitely are. We will start our analysis with those songs, comparing them with other repetitive hit songs. We will illustrate our argument with long lists of examples. Don't take it as a negative appraisal of those songs. You will find many great ones among them ... but some musically pretty plain ones as well. A good example of what is meant here by repetition is Gloria Gaynor's disco hit "I Will Survive" (1979). This song is built out of ten verses, which are almost the same melodically. The monotony is broken with tempo changes and instrumental bridges. Uriah Heap's "Lady In Black" (1971), a song based upon just two chords, offers another good example with its eleven verses and thirteen refrains. Again, in Sting's recent "Desert Rose" (1999) the main theme is repeated many times, but here the changing backing chords are breaking the monotony  not thoroughly though. Last but not least, listen to the Beatles' "Hey Jude" (1968). The "body" of this song is not repetitive, but the refrain is repeated 19 times in a row. Now, let's look at some hit songs with five or more repeated verses (Table 1).

Table 1: Some examples of songs with five or more verses



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Abba - The Winner Takes It All

Animals, The - House Of The Rising Sun

Beatles, The - Let It Be, Revolution

Brown, James - I Feel Good

Cocker, Joe - You Can Leave Your Hat On

Cool And The Gang - Fresh

Culture Club, The - Do You Really Want To Hurt Me

Dire Straits - Sultans Of Swing

Doobie Brothers, The - Long Train Runnin'

Eagles, The - Hotel California

Guns 'n' Roses - One In A Million

Hendrix, Jimi - Hey Joe

Joel, Billy - River Of Dreams

Lennon, John - Woman

Little Richard - Long Tall Sally, Tutti Frutti

Lynyrd Skynyrd - Sweet Home Alabama

Madonna - Material Girl

Metallica - Sanitorium

Pink Floyd - Money

Presley, Elvis - Hound Dog

Rolling Stones, The - Angie

Scorpions, The - Still Loving You

Simon & Garfunkel - The Sounds Of Silence

Status Quo - In The Army Now

Stewart, Dave - Heart Of Stone

Sting - An Englishman In New York

Toto - Africa

Vega, Suzanne - Tom's Diner

Wonder, Stevie - Part-time Lover, You Are The Sunshine Of My Life

Zager & Evans - In The Year Of 2525

Zappa, Frank - My Name Is Bobby Brown





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A quick look at the Queen' songbook learns that the group preferred three (non-instrumental) verses, even in long songs like "It's Late" (1977). Queen however wrote couple of songs with four or more verses too. Examples of Queen songs with five or more verses are: "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" (1980: 5 verses), "Headlong" (1991: 5 verses), "White Man" (1976: 5 verses), "Invisible Man" (1989: 6 verses) and "Las Palabras De Amore" (1982: 6 verses), and "Back Chat" (1982: 10 verses). [1] Except for the tracks on the albums "The Game" (1980) and "Hot Space" (1982) songs with more than three verses, however, were rare. The "Jazz" album (1978) is remarkable in this respect. It contains thirteen songs and almost all of them have a maximum of three or four repetitions of a verse, bridge or refrain. Now let's look at the repetition of refrains. Table 2 lists some examples.

Table 2: Some examples of songs with more than eight times repeated refrain or melody



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Abba - Voulez Vous

Army Of Lovers - Crucified

Beloved, The - Sweet Harmony

Blondie - Maria

Bloodhound Gang - Bad Touch

Boney M - Boat On The River

Chili - Come To L.A.

Chumbawamba - She's Got All The Friends, I Get No Job

Cool And The Gang - Let's Go Dancing, Celebration

East 17 - House Of Love

Goombay Dance Band - Sun Of Jamaica

INXS - Baby Don't Cry

Jacks, Terry - Season In The Sun

Jackson, Michael - Earth Song

Kiss - I Was Made For Loving You

Kravitz, Lenny - It Ain't Over Till It's Over

Manfred Mann's Earth Band - Blinded By The Light

Osibisa - Sunshine Day

Ottawan - D.I.S.C.O., Crazy Music Crazy People

Rednex - Cotton Eye Joe

Scatman John - Scatman

Simon & Garfunkel - Cecilia

Smokie - Living Next Door To Alice

Tears For Fears - Shout

Tokens, The - The Lion Sleeps Tonight

Trio - Da Da Da

Wakelin, Johnny - In Zaire

Wham - Edge Of Heaven





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As we can see, there are many popular songs with iterated refrains. There are two Queen songs with a similar "problem": "Father To Son" (1974) and "In The Lap Of The Gods ... Revisited" (1974). The latter song repeats its catchy sing-along refrain no less than six times in a row. The whole song consists of two verses and seven refrains. On live shows, the group played only four repetitions of the refrain. Another catchy outro-refrain can be found in the song "The Miracle" (1989). Here the refrain was repeated only four times, which (to me) seems to be a better choice, than the eight repetitions in "In The Lap Of The Gods ... Revisited". The famous chorus of We Are The Champions is repeated only three times. Its virtual catchiness is definitely supported by the frequent airplay.

Queen's song "Keep Yourself Alive" (1973) almost fits into this category, as its four measure mini-refrain is repeated seven times; four times in a row in the outro, but varied and key-shifted. Being the most repetitive song from the "Queen I" album, it is no wonder that this song was chosen for the single release. For at first hearing this song really seems to be the most catchy one on the album, more than like say the acyclic song "My Fairy King" (1973) which shows almost no phrase-level repetition at all. To this song one really has to listen several times for getting impressed. Queen's inclination to refrain from repetition also shows in "Fat Bottomed Girls" (1978) whose refrain is repeated only three times  other songwriters would have probably repeated it about twice as much. The same goes for "Bicycle Race" (1978), where the refrain is repeated only four times (nore accurately three and a half).

Melody repetition, of course, is not the same as the repetition of verses or refrains. A melody module can, and often will, return more times as a section of a verse or refrain. Often songwriters use verse structures with inner repetition patterns, like AA, AA', AAAA, AAAB, ABAB, ABAC, and so on. Nice examples of melody-duplication (AA, ABAB) are "Summer Night City" (1979) by Abba and, in the Queen repertoire "Radio Ga-Ga", their hit from 1984. In Queen's "Tie Your Mother Down" (1976) we find three refrains, each with AABAAC phrasing. The iteration of verses and refrain thus strengthens the repetition of melody lines. The title-melody ('A') of "Tie Your Mother Down" (1976) all in all is repeated a dozen times. However, as all those lines together take only about 12 seconds of the song saving it from sounding monotonous. Now let's look at some other examples of songs with repeated sections (Table 3)

Table 3: Some examples of songs with

AA, AAAA, AAAB, AAA'B, ...etc. section(s)



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Aerosmith - Janie's Got A Gun

AC/DC - Highway To Hell

Backstreet Boys, The - I Want It That Way

Beatles, The - Love Me Do

Birds, The - Turn Turn Turn

Black Sabbath - Paranoid

Chic - Le Freak

Crowded House - Weather With You

Doors, The - Riders On The Storm

Earth Wind And Fire - September

Eiffel 65 - Blue

Enya - Orinoco Flow

Equals, The - Baby Come Back

Fine Young Cannibals, The - She Drives Me Crazy

Franky Goes To Hollywood - Relax

Iron Maiden - The Wicker Man

Jackson, Michael - Dirty Diana

Nena - 99 Luftballons

Petty, Tom - Learning To Fly

Red Hot Chili Peppers, The - Under The Bridge

Sex Pistols, The - Anarchy In The UK

Springsteen, Bruce - Born In The USA





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The songs in Table 3 exemplify several forms of inner melody repetition in the verses or refrains. Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" for instance shows the form of AA. In the Doors' "Riders On The Storm" we find AABA. Nena's "99 Luftballons" has ABAB and a multiverse form. A popular form of melody repetition is an iterated title-phrase. Queen uses this form in "Sheer Heart Attack" (1977), "Leaving Home Ain't Easy" (1978) and "It's A Kind Of Magic" (1986). In the last song the title-phrase with the same melody line frequently reappears in the pauses of the lead vocal. In "We Will Rock You" (1977) the title-phrase is repeated eight (2 + 2 + 4) times. "Dancer" (1982), "Don't Try Suicide" (1980), "Put Out The Fire" (1982) and "White Man (1976) all have a title-phrase with the same melody opening the phrases of the refrain. Similar examples are "Headlong" (1991) and "Scandal" (1989). These inner structures of verses and refrains will multiply the occurence of melody lines. In "Crazy Little Thing ..." (1979) the form of the verses is AAB, hence there are as many as ten repetitions of "A" in this song. Another relatively repetitive Queen song is "Funny How Love Is" (1974)  in a special way (melody-wise paralell phrases). The album version of "I Want It All" (1989) repeats its refrain line six times (3 x 2), the single version seven times.

The structure of popsongs is also important, because it frames the location of repetitions in certain parts of a song. In pop music the "gravity center" of verses usually lies much closer to the start than to the end of the song in contrast with the choruses that are fall more frequently closer to the end. In many songs Queen varied the amount of repetitions. In "Flash's Theme" (1981) we hear six repeated "Flash, oh-oh" lines: four before the first bridge, two before both the second and a different bridge. They probably thought that a repeat of the same four lines before the second bridge would have turned the song boring  to their standards. For similar reasons the last part of "Innuendo" (1991) contains only one verse instead of two as in the first part. Noteworthy in this respect are also: "All Dead, All Dead" (1977), "Brighton Rock" (1974), "Doing All Right" (1973)), "Hammer To Fall" (1984) and "She Makes Me" (1974). In "Another One Bites The Dust" (1980) the most  six times  repeated melody in the lead vocal can be found in the verses (AA'BB'). Four of the "Another One Bites The Dust" lines, in the backing track repeat the famous bass riff, which makes this line virtually the most repeated one.

3 Non-repetitive Queen songs. Now, that I have listed many of the repetitive examples, let's look at some non-repetitive ones. A good starting point is "Bohemian Rhapsody" (1975), an acyclic song. This form is rarely used in FM-Pop music. There are five to six different parts in "Bohemian Rhapsody", and only the second one  the "ballad"  is cyclic with two, repeated verses.

On the other hand the song does use other more subtle arts of repetition, which greatly supports the overall catchyness of the song.

Intro: its acyclic, but among the phrases we can find rhythmically and melodically paralelling ones. Beside this the "Easy come easy go, little high, little low," motif re-appears in the opera section ("I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me").

Verse: it makes use of a cliche chord progression (1-6-2-5) which is  as mentioned  also a case of repetition. The variant of the section closing piano-motif also can be found in the intro and the opera section.

The rock section: the famous riff has repeated and variant fragments, moreover the riff-block is repeated (in variant form) at the end of the rock section.

The Coda reprises the mood of the ballad section (for example due to the Eb > Bb/D > Cm progression repeated).

It was a risky step to chose this song as the first single of the album "A Night At The Opera". In the UK in the year of its release the song got the critical air time to start the chain-reaction, in the US it did not (no 4). Examples for formally unusual singles that charted strong: MacArthur Park (Richard Harris), Bat Dance (Prince), Seeds Of Love (Tears For Fears).

Next there is "Under Pressure" (1982). At first sight the two halves of this song have no melodies in common except for the end, where the opening riff returns. The song, however, provides one more fine example of using melody repetition. The melody behind the phrase "'cause love's such an old fashioned word" we also can find in the backing vocal in the second verse. "Scandal" (1989) has two individual sections showing up only in the second half of the song. Many Queen songs, by the way, consist of too many sections to simply call them bridges or refrains. Check out "Princes Of The Universe" (1986)! Other songs with remarkable long sections are "You Take My Breath Away" (1976) and "My Melancholy Blues" (1977), both compositions by Freddie Mercury. John Deacon also wrote some songs with remarkable long cycles of repetition: "Who Needs You" (1977) and "Spread Your Wings" (1977).

"I Want To Break Free" (1984 album version) is remarkably non-repetitive on the level of sections. Its form is as follows:



Intro | Verse | Verse | Bridge | solo (verse) | Verse  outro |



The most repeated (three times) non-instrumental section is the Verse. The third Verse alters the melody, only the last phrase (B) remains the same. A melodic variant of the verses opening phrase also appears in the synth solo. The first two Verses are repetitive on the level of variants:



A - A - A-extended  B



One can hardly find a less repetitive song played on the commercial FM-stations.



Fragments and vasriants of the lead melody can be found in many songs. The lead melodies of Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" (1971), for instance, are derived from the main guitar riff. The same goes for Dont Damn Me (1991-GnR), the Verse of Queens Let Me Entertain You (1978) and the refrain of "The Prophet's Song" (1975). Sometimes things turn the other way around as the guitar solos are copying the lead melody. Listen for instance to the early Beatles songs "And I Love Her" (1964), "I'll Follow The Sun" (1964), and "I Should Have Known Better" (1964). Some examples of songs from other groups are listed in Table 4.

Table 4: Some examples of songs with instrumental solos or sections copying the lead melody



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Abba - I Do, I Do I Do

Armstrong, Louis - Hello Dolly

Kiss - God Gave Rock And Roll To You

Martin, Ricky - Livin' La Vida Loca

Modern Talking - Brother Louie

Ottawan - Crazy Music Crazy People

Stewart, Rod - Sailing

Twisted Sisters - We're Not Gonna Take It





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Queen' examples of guitar solos starting with a melody imported from lead vocal are "Dancer" (1982), "Dreamers Ball" (1978), "Heaven For Everyone" (1995), "Killer Queen" (1974), "Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon" (1975), Sail Away Sweet Sister (1980), Life Is Real (1982) and "Scandal" (1989).

"Don't Stop Me Now" (1978) shows a very clever way of using repetition and melody variants. The phrase repetitions and variants provide cohesion between the intro, the verses and the bridge. The form of the song is simple: Intro, Verse, Bridge, Verse, Bridge2, Verse (solo then ending), Bridge, Intro. The really interesting aspect is the sequence of melody modules (Figure 1). The verses and bridge can be regarded as an expansion of the intro's melody material. In the verses the 'AB' modules of the intro are repeated twice with some variation. Then we hear a return of the 'DE' module, again with some variation. Next there are some extra modules pasted in between 'E' in the verse and 'F' in the bridge, while the bridge itself ends with a new module 'K'. This special way of melody expansion inside the original sequence is very rare in pop music. The forms of the verse and the bridge, by the way, are very similar. If you omit the 'CDE' sequence from the middle of the verse, you'll get the same pattern of alternating modules.

Figure 1: Melody expansion in "Don't Stop Me Now"



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[intro]

Tonight I'm gonna have myself a real good time A

I feel alive B

And the world C

It's turning inside out, yeah D

I'm floating around in ecstasy E

So don't stop me now F

Don't stop me 'cause I'm having a good time having a good time F variant

[verse]

I'm a shooting star leaping through the skies like a tiger A

Defying the laws of gravity B

I'm a racing car passing by like Lady Godiva A variant

I'm gonna go go go B

There's no stopping me C (variant)

I'm burning through the skies, yeah D

Two hundred degrees that's why E variant

They call me Mister Fahrenheit G

I'm trav'ling at the speed of light G variant

I wanna make a supersonic man of you H

[bridge]

Don't stop me now I

I'm having such a good time I'm having a ball J

Don't stop me now I

If you wanna have a good time just give me a call J variant

Don't stop me now ('Cause I'm having a good time) F variant

Don't stop me now (Yes I'm having a good time) F variant

I don't want to stop at all K (shifted G)





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Our interpretation of "Don't Stop Me Now" (1978) as an 'expansion' model, of course, does not have to coincide with the actual process of composition. It is also possible that Freddie first composed the verse and the bridge, and added the intro later on as an extract of the other two. This 'extract' model actually is more simple and looks less unusual than the "expansion" model. See simpler cases of this gambit in Queen song Teo Torriate and The Prophets Song and also in the McCartney penned Those Were The Days.

Summarizing our findings thus far, we can conclude that the Queen songs frequently deviate from the standards of rock and pop music in respect to melody repetition. A rough comparison suggests that there is less repetition of verses and refrains in the Queen songbook, which moreover includes more long songs with intricate non-repetitive sequences of melody lines. Next we will try to measure the melodic content of the Queen songs in a more quantitative way.

4 Measuring the melody factor. For our second approach to the Queen songs we timed the nett melodic content of the lead vocals with a stopwatch. To shorten things we will simply call the outcome the melody factor. This factor indicates the real amount of lead melody, composed for a given song  omitting the melodies composed for the backing tracks. Listening to the songs, the clock was stopped at each pause in the melody of more than one second, even if the pause itself was part of the melody. The clock was blocked at every repeated or just slightly modified part, reaching the length of one bar (or one line of lyrics). Spoken or just "semi-melodic" phrases were also omitted. Phrases with one or two modified less "important" notes, matching the number of syllables, were regarded as slightly modified parts. The same applies to similar sequences with key-shifting, modified backing chords, ornaments, and improvisations over a repeated refrain  e.g. a big part of the outro in "Somebody To Love" (1976) or INXS' "Baby Don't Cry" (1992). Characteristic harmonies  like those in "Somebody To Love"  on the other hand were counted in, while the lead vocal was off. Many "too" long  over two seconds  sustained notes were also cut off (consider the ending of Dont Cry by Guns n Roses).

For the Queen sample I measured all their studio albums except the movie soundtrack "Flash Gordon" (1981). Instrumental songs like "Procession" (1974), "God Save The Queen" (1975), "Seven Seas Of Rhye" (pre-visited on Queen I, 1973) were also omitted. All in all this totals to 148 Queen songs (Appendix 1). This sample was compared with songs aired by a popular Hungarian radio-station with oldies up to 1990. (This station changed drastically since then) For this FM-radio sample I measured 125 songs in a row at the year end 2000 and the start of 2001. Sometimes it was not quite clear what to measure and what not. Many recent music, especially R&B, makes a heavy use of section-variants and ornaments, which sometimes results in a relative high melody factor, and in difficult measuring. But usually this factor can be measured with a tolerance of a few percent which is enough for a first, rough comparison.

Queen and Beatles have some things common: outstanding melody-writing capabilities, diversity, creative approach of recording and arrangement, top-popularity across Europe. Therefore it seemed fit to make a comparison with the Fab Four repertoire. So I measured the melody factor of all the songs from "Please Please Me" (1963), "Revolver" (1966), "Sgt. Pepper's" (1967), the "White Album" (1968), "Abbey Road" (1969)  see Table 5. I checked the results with some songs I expected to be rather "short" or "long", i.e. "Hey Jude" (1968). Among those Beatles songs this last song came out as the song with the highest melody factor: 53 seconds  with "You Never Give Me Your Money" (52 seconds) as "silver medalist".

Table 5: Parameters of the melody factor of some Beatles albums

Record N Minimum Maximum Range Mean Std. Deviation



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Please Please Me 8 15 27 12 20.9 5.1

Revolver 13 7 36 29 17.7 6.8

Sgt. Pepper's 14 12 40 28 26.6 9.3

White Album 29 3 45 42 22.9 9.4

Abbey Road 17 8 52 44 23.0 10.8



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Total 81 3 52 49 22.5 22.5



Queen's "best" one is "Bohemian Rhapsody" (1975) with a score of approximately 165 seconds. This almost equals the total of the eight songs the Beatles wrote for their first album "Please Please Me". Again, it's not "fair" to make a comparison in this direct way. A long song is not in any way better than a short one. "Bohemian Rhapsody" is almost six minutes long, while the songs on "Please Please Me" have a length of about two minutes each. Its definitely a weak point of this analysis that the net melody content is not normalized by the length of the recording. Also consider that the slow paced four-part intro of "Bohemian Rhapsody" which takes about 40 seconds, one couldn't deconstruct it to make two songs out of it equaling "Let It Be" (1969: 20 seconds) and "And I Love Her" (1964: 18 seconds). On the other hand one can hardly find a melody in a song like "Love Of My Life" (1975: 65 seconds) which gets less than five stars in regard of catchyness.

Except for these two songs there are yet another forty Queen songs with a melody factor reaching 50 seconds and more  about every fourth according to my measurements. [2] The Queen sample also included 17 songs (11.6%) with a melody factor of 20 seconds or less like "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" (1980), "Jesus" (1973), "Rain Must Fall" (1989), and "Stone Cold Crazy" (1974). [3] The melody factor of over sixty percent (62.5%) of the songs came out between the margins of 20 and 50 seconds.

Table 6: Parameters of the melody factor of the Queen songs per author

Author N Minimum Maximum Range Mean Std. Deviation



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Deacon 12 23 62 39 39.3 12.6

May 36 15 155 140 38.9 25.8

Mercury 46 14 165 151 54.1 29.7

Taylor 17 14 60 46 32.5 12.3

Collaborations 37 15 80 65 40.7 16.9



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148 14 165 151 43.4 24.2



We can see that the melody factor does not show, which song is better  take for instance "Delilah" (1991) with a high melody factor versus "We Will Rock You" (1977) with a low one. It also can be seen, that all four group members wrote "long" songs (Table 6). They definitely were influenced by each other, mainly by Freddie who wrote the very first "long" songs  "My Fairy King" (1973) and "Liar" (1973). Acyclic songs already there before Queen entered the stage. Led Zeppelin released "Stairway To Heaven" at the end of 1971. Freddie developed this song-form further using less repetition of sections. Often these songs were up to 4 to 6 minutes long. The combination of longer songs with less melody repetition resulted in the first Queen songs with a high melody-factor. After the album "A Day At The Races" (1976) acyclic songs disappeared almost thoroughly, but "long" songs remained. Only the albums "Works" (1984) and "Made In Heaven" (1991-1995) do not contain songs with over 50 seconds of nett melodic content of lead vocal.

Table 7: Parameters of the melody factor of the Queen albums

Album N Minimum Maximum Range Mean Std. Deviation



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Queen 9 14 76 62 40.8 21.5

Queen II 10 19 136 117 50.2 34.0

Sheer Heart Attack 13 19 60 41 37.0 12.2

A Night At The Opera 11 33 165 132 65.6 48.6

A Day At The Races 10 27 110 83 64.6 29.0

News Of The World 11 15 74 59 40.5 22.0

Jazz 13 26 72 46 43.8 14.9

The Game 10 16 54 38 32.4 11.5

Hot Space 11 14 73 59 31.4 19.1

The Works 9 32 49 17 37.4 5.9

A Kind of Magic 9 17 89 72 48.6 22.8

The Miracle 10 15 62 47 38.0 15.1

Innuendo 12 17 75 58 45.3 16.8

Made In Heaven 10 17 44 27 32.3 10.2



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Total 148 14 165 151 43.4 24.2



The albums "A Night At The Opera" (1975) and "A Day At The Races" (1976) both have an average melody factor of about 65 seconds (Table 7). Compared with the Beatles repertoire this value seems really high, a real anomaly. On album level it's enough for two to three albums by others  the Beatles' "Revolver" (1966) album has an average of under 20 seconds per song. And if you notice how catchy those melodies on "Opera" are, that album deserves the highets praises.

5 More facts and figures. Before continuing our comparison, I will again list some examples. They will give you a good impression of the melody factor and you can try to measure them yourself. First, take a look at some songs from the bottom range  up to 15 seconds. As you will see this list is dominated by rather instrumental oriented songs (Table 8):

Table 8: Some examples of songs with a low melody factor (up to 15 seconds)



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Aerosmith - Sweet Emotion

Beatles, The - Birthday

Beck - Loser

Bega, Lou - Mambo No5

Black Sabbath - Iron Man

Boney M - Daddy Cool, Painter Man

Culture Beat - Mr Vain

Double - The Captain Of Her Heart

Dylan, Bob - Knocking On Heaven's Door

Estefan, Gloria - Conga

Five - Keep On Movin'

Gibson Brothers, The - Que Sera Mi Vida

Jerry, Mungo - Summertime

Kaoma - Lambada

Kraftwerk - Das Model

Kravitz, Lenny - Are You Go My Way

Madonna - Music

Modjo - Lady (Hear Me Tonight)

Nirvana - Polly

Pink Floyd - Another Brick In The Wall

Preston, Billy - Nothing For Nothing

Prince - When Doves Cry

Prodigy, The - No Good

Silver Convention, The - Fly Robin Fly

Smith, Will - Man In Black

Stakka Bo - Here We Go Again





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Table 9 in turn shows some examples of songs with a high melody factor. Some of them are rather long. The total length of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven" (1971) is over seven minutes. Guns 'n' Roses "Estranged" (1991) even surpasses nine full minutes.

Table 9: Some examples of songs with a high melody factor (over 45 seconds)



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Abba - Dancing Queen

Aerosmith - What It Takes

Bee Gees, The - How Deep Is Your Love

Cotugno, Toto - L'Italiano (Lasciate Mi Cantare)

Extreme - More Than Words

Guns 'n' Roses - Estranged

Led Zeppelin - Stairway To Heaven

May, Brian - Back To The Light

Minogue, Kylie, & Jason Donovan - Especially For You

Seal - Kiss By A Rose

Simpson, Jessica - I Wanna Love You Forever

Tyler, Bonnie - Holding Out For A Hero

Wham - Careless Whisper





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Long songs are not the only ones with a high melody factor. Some megamixes and some less known "adult-pop" category songs will show the same outcomes. Our intention, however, is not to compare the Queen songs with these genres, but with FM-Pop radio and Beatles song repertoire. FM-Pop  because Queen hits were a part  and an interesting part  of FM-Pop-culture. Table 10 below shows the most important outcomes of our measurements.

Table 10: Parameters of the melody factor of FM-Pop radio, Beatles and Queen song repertoire

Repertoire N Minimum Maximum Range Mean Std. Deviation



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FM-Pop Radio 125 5 62 57 23.5 9.6

Beatles 81 3 52 49 22.5 9.2

Queen 148 14 165 151 43.4 24.2



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Total 354 3 165 162 31.6 19.9



Remarkably the melody factor of the Beatles songs is almost identical to the factor of the tested FM-Pop station. The mean of the Beatles song repertoire (22.5 seconds) lies slightly below that of FM-Pop radio music (23.5 seconds) represented here by one single radio station. A statistical test, however, shows they do not differ significantly. The Queen songs, however, do. Queen songs on average reach a melody factor of 43.4 seconds (F(1) = 74.8; p < 0.000). At the start of this essay, we promised a visualization of the differences between the Queen songs and FM-Pop radio music. At last, here you can see the Queen anomaly in a very visual way (Figure 2 and 3).

Figure 2: Percentage of songs (y) and melody factor (x) for FM-radio songs and Beatles repertoire



The histograms and curves in Figures 2 and 3 are corrected for differences in sample size. The pattern is clear. Figure 2 above shows the frequencies and curves for FM-Pop radio music and the Beatles repertoire. They prove to be very similar. In figure 3 below we see the different curves for FM-Pop radio music and the Queen songs. The Queen songs cover wider range. Queen clearly wrote regular as well as non-regular songs. The upper range (50 - 100) is remarkable thick for Queen songs or remarkable thin for the others. Many pop-songwriters would not break the golden rule of using six to eight repetitions, Queen often did. Of course, there are more "long" songs than our figures indicate. The radio station in question (sample token in 2001) hardly represented the whole of pop music, as it supports mostly the repetitive range (15 to 25 seconds). Other stations may have their top at 25-30 seconds, but that still is quite below the average Queen song.

Figure 3: Percentage of songs (y) and melody factor (x) for FM-radio songs and Queen repertoire



6 Some final notes. What does all this say about the songs written and performed by Queen? As one can argue, it is not a big thing to write long melodies, avoiding rote repetition. To make it commercially successful thats a big thing. The use of more subtle arts of repetition may help and the songwriters of Queen seem to have known this.

Writing catchy melodies of 60 seconds is more difficoult than writing a catchy melody of 20 seconds. This partly explains why Queen did not exerts its musical influence on a herd of young musicians and garage bands. Many were impressed, but most of them choose to look for easier song-models to copy or cover.

Repetitive music has always been fashionable. Who knows, should Queen have written more repetitive songs, the group may have multiplied its impressive single chart success. It is remarkable, that Queen did not really become successful in the USA until the group released one of its most repetitive  but definitely great  albums to date, "The Game" in 1980. The next repetitive album  at least to Queen standards  called "Hot Space" (1982), however, was a flop in the US.

With its extraordinary talent for writing catchy melodies and arranging songs, Queen brought many formally unusual songs to the masses. Other groups had big difficoulties by exporting less-repetitive complex music to the audience of FM-stations. This was one of Queens biggest achivement.



About the use of repetition you can read more in-depth essays than this one. Since the first release of this article in 2001 a series of song analysis essays try to discover the interesting compositional details of Queen songs. These articles often deal with cases of repetition.



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Notes

1. "The Prophet's Song" (1975) is a special case, as there's a canon in the middle of the song, which is a specific form of repetition. The melody factor of this 87 seconds "long" (in terms of melody factor) canon has been counted in our computations because every single note seems to be carefully composed.

2. Ordered alphabetically these 42 "long" Queen songs with a melody factor reaching 50 seconds or more are: "'39" (1975), "All Gods People" (1991), "Bicycle Race" (1978), "Breakthrou" (1989), "Bring Back That Leroy Brown" (1974), "Cool Cat" (1982), "Delilah" (1991), "Don't Try So Hard" (1991), "Don't Stop Me Now" (1978), "Dreamers Ball" (1978), "Father To Son" (1974), "Friend Will Be Friends" (1986), "Funny How Love Is" (1974), "Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy" (1976), "Great King Rat" (1973), "I Can't Live With You" (1991), "Innuendo" (1991), "It's Late" (1977), "Leaving Home Ain't Easy" (1978), "Liar" (1973), "Love Of My Life" (1975), "Mustapha" (1978), "My Fairy King" (1973), "My Melancholy Blues" (1977), "One Vision" (1986), "Pain Is So Close To Pleasure" (1986), "Play The Game" (1980), "Princes Of The Universe" (1986), "Scandal" (1989), "Somebody To Love" (1976), "Spread Your Wings" (1977), "Tenement Funster" (1974), "Teo Torriatte" (1976), "The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke" (1974), "The March Of The Black Queen" (1974), "The Millionaire Waltz" (1976), "The Miracle" (1989), "The Prophet's Song" (1975), "The Show Must Go On" (1991), "Under Pressure" (1982), "You And I (1976)", and "You Take My Breath Away" (1976).

3. The 17 Queen songs with a melody factor equal to or less than 20 seconds are: "Bijou" (1991), "Calling All Girls" (1982), "Dancer" (1982); "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" (1980), "Don't Lose Your Head" (1986), "Dragon Attack" (1980), "Fight From The Inside" (1977), "Jesus" (1973), "Modern Times Rock 'n' Roll" (1973), "My Life Has To Be Saved" (1995), "Put Out The Fire" (1982), "Rain Must Fall" (1989), "Sheer Heart Attack" (1977), "Someday One Day" (1974), "Stone Cold Crazy" (1974), "We Will Rock You" (1977), and "You Don't Fool Me" (1995).





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Suggestions for further reading

Some preliminary notes on the memory value and memorizing of rock music can be found in Simon Frith's famous article "Why do songs have words?" published in: A.L. White (ed.), Lost in music. Culture, style and the musical event. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987, 77-106. Many deep reflections about repetition in music have been written down by the British musicologist Richard Middleton. Try his online essay "Over and over. Notes towards a politics of repetition," his contribution to the Conference "Grounding Music," of May 1996. If you think it's too abstract, you better read his book Studying popular music." Buckingham: Open University Press, 1990.



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2001 Š Soundscapes





8. Sebastian

After reading it again I'm even more impressed ... why don't you publish it as a book?

9. PD

Why no book?

1) I have no proper contacts to do it

2) the book would reuire multiple more lenght, more investigation, more time, which I could not fit into my life.

3) I'm pleased with the publicity what the internet offers.



The article still need a final verification before update.



For similar resons I dont expect myself to make a book of these articles.

The thing I would like to see i book format or the most are my fingerstyle guitar arrangements.

It seems so hopeless...

10. Sebastian

At least I think you can leave it as an option, your text is about thirty pages and you can easily make them sixty by adding some graphics and akin, it would of course take a little bit of time and double-checking but you've already done most of the work. Spelling is averagely good and all in all it'd bring the opportunity for other people to enjoy it (some of us are still old fashioned), of course, by adding something to your income ;)



I'm not encouraging you to become a writer whatsoever, just, I'm just suggesting you to leave it at least in "perhaps".

11. PD

> but you've already done most of the work.

I think there would be a lot of extra work with it. To find a label, to sign a contract with them, etc...

This essay would be worth for a chapter.

12. PD

The other day the idea of a book popped into my mind again.



Lets summarize what does the project need:

Motivation - that's provided.

Knowledgable contributor. Without it I'm afraid

the book would be criticized for poor credibility.

I need a contributor (possibly the same person) who would also correct the grammatical and stylistic mistakes.

The project needs someone contacting a proper publisher.



Considering they could market already 30 books analysing the music of the Beatles I suppose the only book analysing the music of Queen could be also marketed.

For marketing-related reasons it's not good to publish the content of the book on-line, so the material (or just the rest of the articles) would be turned unpublic.



If you know someone able to solve the above problems, please let me know.

13. Bohardy

A fantastic idea Denes, and one that I sincerely hope bears fruition.



I'd be more than happy and willing to be a (the) contributor who corrects and improves the grammatical and stylistic mistakes. I've done the odd-bit of proof-reading here and there, and am an absolute pedant for those kind of things.



I don't know if you're aware, because you rarely post on QZ these days, but Lester Burnham there has just got a publishing deal to compile a book documenting and briefly discussing every Queen song. Whilst being in similar territory to your proposed book, your audiences would be different, as yours would obviously be aimed at the more serious musician and music scholar (who naturally has an interest in Queen), whereas his is geared more towards the lay Queen fan.



He's the only person I can think of right now who might have the neccessary contacts to try and get your idea off the ground. I can put you in touch with him if you like.



Let's get this thing going!

14. Sebastian

I think it's important for you to take one step at a time. As a(nother) writer myself - although my field isn't the same - I know that the process is frustrating and overwhelming. Yet at the end of the day I've still got the (naive?) idea that quality will find its way through eventually. So I'd recommend you to first concentrate on the content, then design and other details, and then see if it works commercially, which I think and hope it will.



I don't see the logic on your "poor credibility" comment. All of your articles so far have been perfect, save for some minimal harmonic maps which feature multiple possible interpretations and others - including me - would have probably written differently, yet they're not "errors" in the absolute sense of the word and even if they were, Greg Brooks' book has more mistakes than words but still it sold.



I'm glad you're interested in doing that, and I'm entirely sure it'd be appreciated by many. Plus there are several places where you can get free promotion: queenzone, queenconcerts, royal legend...

15. PD

Bohardy, I would say a big fat OK, for your contribution! And Lester also seems to be proper person for getting in contact with a publisher.



Last week I started some overall editing on a future book for first time. I guess it would take maybe a year (???) to complete. With the old tempo it would take 8-10 years. Only the remaining songs would take averagely 2-3 hours to analyse each. Plus I would add some chapters that have been already sketched up in the forum posts (eg the repetition article). And lost of afterwork...

The book would be a few hundred pages long even with relatively small fonts.



"poor credibility" thing:

There are many points where I cannot express the musical tricks eg. the Mustapha article which I want to revise.

With Bohardy's contribution I'm more optimistic on the credibility.



16. Sebastian

Excellent. I can't wait to see your book.

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