Queen and Philosophy: Guaranteed to Blow Your Mind is a collection of cutting-edge philosophical essays on the rock group Queen, founded in 1970 and originally featuring lead vocalist Freddie Mercury. Queen's reputation and fan following continue to grow in the twenty-first century.
These insightful and provocative chapters include:
uncover the origins of Queen's unique style in prog rock, vulgarity, and lower versus higher Romanticism
examine Queen's view of love and friendship
draw upon three timeless Queen songs, "We Will Rock You," "We Are the Champions," and "Don't Stop Me Now" and Socrates's behavior in the Apology, to understand the "rocking" nature of philosophy
identify the connections between ancient matriarchal religion and Queen's love for strong female imagery
explore how Brian May's astrophysics brings to bear the issues of absolute versus relative spacetime and how the philosophies of Newton, Mach, and Einstein contribute to Queen's creative output
analyze the structure of Queen's sound to answer the inevitable question, How can four people make all that music?
expose what Queen's songs tell us about the contemporary theory of mental illness and therapy
scrutinize Roger Taylor's stark impressions of ordinary life and death, and their alignment to the cynical musings of Diogenes of Sinope and Seneca's blunt observations on the shortness of life
look at the movie Highlander through the music of Queen and reveal how both song and cinema convey the philosophy of bushido, the soul of the samurai
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Part I: My Fairy Kings
1. Side White: Worshiping the White Queen (As it Began)
Jared Kemling
2. Side Black: Master Stroke of a Fairy Feller
Jared Kemling
3. Queen, Prog, and Vulgar Romanticism
Jan Olof Bengtsson
Part II: A Night at the Concert
4. Be Free with Your Tempo: Freedom, Individuality, and Nonconformity in Innuendo
Douglas Rasmussen
5. Let Me Entertain You: Performance as a Tour de Force (Of Course)
Julie Kuhlken
6. Freddie’s Left Hand: Queen and the Order of Music
Randall E. Auxier
Part III: The Show Must Go On
7. Is Adam Lambert a Killer of Queen, or Somebody to Love?
Megan Volpert
8. Instrumental Instrumentalism: Is Red Special a Member of Queen?
Steven Gimbel
Part IV: Made in the Heavens
9. Hot Spacetime
Kristina Šekrst
10. Tie the Cosmos Down: Brian May’s Astrophysics and Music
Randall E. Auxier
Part V: I’m Going Slightly Mad
11. Stone Cold Crazy: Queen, Mental Disorder, and Suffering
Snita Ahir-Knight
12. Hitting Rock Bottom
Robert S. Vuckovich
Part VI: Sheer Head Attack
13. Hammer to Fall in the Shadow of Death
Robert DeVall
14. Don’t Lose Your Head: The Interconnectedness of Queen and Highlander
Kevin Taylor
15. We Want to Love Forever, Forever is Ours Today
John Shook
Part VII: Some Body to Love
16. Freddie and Mary: A Single Soul Dwelling in Two Bodies
Andrew Kaplan
17. Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy
Darci Doll
Part VIII: Supersonic Men
18. Queen and My Uncle’s Delicacy of Taste and Passion
Christopher M. Innes
19. He Will Rock You: Socrates was the Most Rock and Roll of Men
Michael F. Patton
References (I Want it All)
Bohemian Biographies
Index (Now I’m Here)
About the Author :
Jared Kemling, a philosophy instructor at Rend Lake College, is editor of The Cultural Power of Personal Objects (2021).
Randall E. Auxier, professor of philosophy and communication studies at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, is author of numerous works including As Deep as It Gets: Movies and Metaphysics (2022) and Metaphysical Graffiti: Deep Cuts in the Philosophy of Rock (2017).
