I have to go back deep in my memory to my year seven school trip to Kalbari in what I remember as 1981. There were two songs played pretty much through the school trip, one was the complete tape of the Beach Boys from Surfing Safari to Barbara Ann and Surfing USA. The song that was played in between the Beach Boys greatest hits was A Crazy Little Thing Called Love.
Thirty odd years later, my teenage nephew who had just discovered Queen asked me if I knew the band Queen. In the most monotone voice I could muster, I told him I had heard of them. Whilst he was drooling over Bohemian Rhapsody, A Crazy Little Thing Called Love remains my favourite song as I like the catchy tune. The simplicity of the song paired beautifully with the Beach Boy classics and sits in my long-term memory written in less than 10 minutes, I don’t care that this song lacks the complexity or depth of their other songs.
Ok, so apart from the nostalgic value, what invokes such passion from a Queen classic? This song is a little different from their classic songs, this is an album filler to my mind, a short catchy tune lasting two and a half minutes. This is definitely a radio song, short, punchy and fairly basic in structure. The song was written by Freddie Mercury in the bath at the Bayerischer Hof at Munich, apparently Freddie jumped out of the bath to grab his guitar and sit at the piano to finish the song.
It is not complex like Bohemian Rhapsody, the song is short running for 2.42 minutes and plenty of acoustic guitar, some drums kick in and then the electric guitar. The voice of Freddie Mercury shines through, this is what I like about this song, the catchy tune and simplicity of the lyrics, it almost feels as an afterthought as an album filler. The song is a tribute to Elvis Presley and Cliff Richard and became the first number one hit for Queen in the United States and still one of their most commercially profitable songs.
Observations in an undemocratic world 