Sometimes I get the impression that people forget that sex is, or at least can be, pretty funny. In particular, they quite often forget that funny sex can still be sexy.
I can’t work out how po-faced this is supposed to be, but to me, it reads like a treatise on the sexiness of silliness.
It’s the first video to ever be banned from MTV (despite genuinely climaxing with someone jumping into a giant cake).
This is a fat bassed finger clicker. Saucy and stupid, Freddie gurns and moans his way through the whole thing, and somehow manages to sell the unsellable.
It’s almost a synthetic, shouted and synthesised riposte to Je t’aime…moi non plus.
Sexy body, sexy, sexy body
I want your body
Baby you’re hot
Freddie gets proper filthy by the end of it, sounding genuinely turned on, despite the fact that he’s just spent most of the time yelling the words sexy and body in as many different contorted modulations as possible.
It manages to be less subtle than Get Down Make Love. Which is, frankly, an achievement.
It’s kind of awful.
But it’s also clearly brilliant.
It’s pure Freddie. Giggling at himself without giggling. Perfectly deadpan. Sexily deadpan. Who else could manage that? Who else could make a minimalist stripped back piece of music, give it a comically bouncy bassline as its main hook, and then spend a the whole time yelling ‘sexy boday’ into a mic? Who could do that and somehow still seem sexy? Still seem turned on? Still seem self aware?
It should be the most overwrought, trite and banal approach to sexiness ever. It probably is. It somehow doesn’t matter. Somehow that shuffling beat pulls it all together. Somehow Freddie’s charisma shines all the way through the fluff, and you end up with a glorious, warm, funny and genuine party track.
It’s got that lush echo montage near the beginning. It’s got those weird sound effects through out. It’s got an off key upward vocal harmony crescendo. It’s got a weirdly experimental edge to it.
It’s got awful lyrics, that somehow, somehow, manage to sound authentic.
You’ve got the cutest ass I’ve ever seen
Knock me down for a six any time
The delivery is so far over the top that it somehow lands on the other side.
I don’t know how it works.
It works.
I swear, it works.
I don’t know how he does it.
It’s indicative of this record, really. It’s a surprisingly challenging thing. Full of weirdness and abstractly poor choices. It sounds a little too cheap to be as difficult as it wants. It never quite nails the tone.
But at the same time, it has a warmth, energy and passion that kind of carry it through. It remains a unique and satisfying thing.
You just have to take it on a different set of terms to usual.
This is the record that only Queen could make, it is a precious thing.
It’s about as sexy as someone shouting the word sexy could be.
It’s not right. But it’s okay.
And I love it for it.
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Queen: An Exploded Diagram is me having big and little thoughts about every Queen song in chronological order. If you want to support me, making it more financially viable and easier to explain to people at parties, please back my patreon.
Illustration by Emma.
Queen: An Exploded Diagram 
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