Friday, January 28, 2011

Queen Song of the Week: Fat Bottomed Girls

So this week I'm in a bit of a quandary: every song featured from here on out in Queen's set list of their 1982 Milton Keynes show is a well-known single. And many have already been featured as Queen Songs of the Week.

What's a girl to do?

I had anticipated this when I first decided to feature the set list of this concert, but that was like three months ago and I wasn't prepared to actually acknowledge that at some point the future would get here.

But it's here. Drat.

The songs I haven't featured are actually scattered rather nicely throughout the rest of the set list so I think what I'm going to do is just skip through to the next new song and provide links to the songs already featured. Make sense?

So after the guitar solo, the band played Under Pressure: one of my favorite live songs by the band for reasons I've already discussed in detail here.

Now, I've referred to Fat Bottomed Girls a few times on this blog (specifically here and here), but I've never featured the song so let's get to it.

Fat Bottomed Girls was written by Dr. May and appeared on the band's 1978 album Jazz. The song was released as the Double-A side of a single (along with Bicycle Race) in 1978, peaking at #11 and #24 on the U.K. and U.S., respectively.


Though RT sings background vocals onstage, he doesn't sing on the studio version: Dr. May and Freddie Mercury perform all the background vocals. The rest of the song itself is pretty simple although there is a bit of a tricky drum beat that took me weeks to figure out on Rock Band! Oooh that RT!

Performed live, this song was always a crowd favorite and was one of only two songs off the Jazz album that the band played into the 80s.

This song always makes me smile because without fail while on a run and facing a particular massive hill, my iPhone would shuffle to this song. It always made me giggle and made the hill seem less daunting.

Happy Listening!

5 comments:

  1. Every time I think about this song, I get a flashback of my old CEO a few years ago standing on top of a bar doing karaoke to this tune in a non-descript beer joint in Fond du Lac!

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  2. This song brings back so many great school dance memories to me...thanks for sharing!!!

    Happy Friday!!

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  3. Now, I haven't met him personally, like you have. But, I've ALWAYS been amused by the fact that Brian May who comes off as this sweet, soft-spoken kinda guy, wrote this sorta crass over the top song. I absolutely love this song; and the fact that it's he who wrote it makes me all the more amused by it every time I her it. And, after this post I will have to add it to my gym playlist. Id be curious to know what other Queen songs you have on your running playlist, or any solo stuff from the guys. My faves are "Dead on Time" and "One Vision", as well as Freddie's solo song "Living on my Own".

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  4. Lisa - Ha this is a great song for karaoke! Too funny!

    Collette - Ha yes it makes me think of dancing at my father-in-law's wedding. They never would have played this song at my parochial school dances! LOL

    Sarah - I feel the same way, but according to folks who are bigger fans than I, Brian has a bit of a dark side and has made some comments in interviews that totally make me blush! LOL I have quite a few Queen/solo songs on my playlist - my favorite is I'm in Love with My Car which is the EXACT tempo that I need to do easy runs at!

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  5. I'm in Love With My Car; I never thought of that! I do love that song! I just let my Classic Queen playlist run during my eliptical workout today, and realized I've totally overlooked "Hammer to Fall" as a great workout song.

    Oh hey, did you ever get a copy of the January Mojo mag? Now that I've read it I realize it was more of a feature on Freddie, rather than the band. Being that he's my favorite, I loved it, but, sadly, there is very little mention of RT.

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