The Subtle "Innuendo:" Freddie Mercury's Epitaph

It has always been so: college textbooks are frighteningly expensive. During my undergraduate, the annual investment of textbooks was the most fluid and generally stressful financial aspect of starting a semester. With several hundred dollars on the line, it did not seem like tacking on another $20 or so to indulge in some new music was such a big deal - at least not to the irresponsible twentysomething that I was. There were a couple of albums that I snuck into my collection under the umbrella of my textbook budget, one of which was Tin Machine II. Another was Queen’s Innuendo, an album that I have been thinking a lot about in the past few weeks.

In 1991, Queen held the same position for me that I described in my previous post about David Bowie. I grew up with them featured prominently on the radio, but the only album I had by them was the Flash Gordon Soundtrack, which was an odd entry in their catalog. I also owned a greatest hits CD and had every intention of eventually expanding their presence in my collection.

It took me almost two decades to realize this latter ambition, by the way.  As of this writing, the only Queen studio album missing from my collection is The Miracle, which I did have at one point.  That, however, is another story.

Queen had a progressive aspect that kept them on my radar, so when I read that Steve Howe had a guest appearance on Innuendo,  it became the first proper Queen album in my adult CD collection. Before its release, it seemed that Queen’s music had suffered from some inconsistency due the commercial expectations of their success. Certainly, Radio Ga Ga had its sights on the masses and did not compare to the cinematic scope of Bohemian Rhapsody, at least in my mind. The symphonic horizons of Innuendo suggested that Queen was making an earnest attempt to recapture the adventurous artistry that informed their best work. I enjoyed it a lot.



What I did not know when I bought Innuendo, however, was that Freddie Mercury was sick. He had been fighting a very private battle with AIDS for several years by that point, but publicly denied that his health was deteriorating. Mercury finally announced his condition late in 1991, and passed away virtually the next day. With this news, Innuendo suddenly and dramatically changed for me. Within the context of Mercury’s mortality, the album’s earnestness and good humor seemed more like urgency and poise.



Queen was an album band, so although their songs could be taken individually, the programming always seemed to enhance the album's overall narrative.  The placement of the melodramatic The Show Must Go On as the closing track on Innuendo was an undeniably clear statement. After the announcement came, I remember sitting in my dorm room getting choked up with several friends imagining the once vibrant Mercury sitting on a stool for support and belting out the vocals for this track in spite of his own fading strength.



Within the context of Mercury’s imminent demise, it suddenly became apparent that the impetus for this album was not merely an effort to recapture past glories. Even taking Mercury’s condition into account, the value of Innuendo did not lie in the fact that it was the last time he would record with Queen before he passed. Rather, it was because that album was about his impending death and a document on the manner in which he chose to approach it.  Mercury's death was the innuendo that ran throughout the album, too subtle to notice on the surface, but impossible to ignore once it came to light.

Bowie’s recent passing brought this situation to mind.  The brave and subtle way in which Innuendo brought Mercury’s struggles to light was so revealing about his character and his art has inspired me to seek the same in Bowie's recent posthumous release, Blackstar. Certainly, I don't expect it to sound the same as Innuendo.  There are few artists who are willing to put that kind of struggle up for public scrutiny, however, and I think it would be a shame to overlook such a personal epitaph.

"Some Nights," fun., and a Heavy Crown to Bear

This summer, I got a new car. It seemed that the time had come: the old Scion XA was finally starting to incur monthly repair bills, and we, as a family, needed a car with a bit more room anyhow. I said my goodbyes and replaced it with a Mazda CX-5 and, with one exception, I could not be happier. It seems that they just don’t make multiple disc players for cars anymore, so, despite the Bluetooth headset capabilities of my stereo, I’ve reverted to juggling discs like I used to juggle cassettes way back in the old days. I’m that stubborn.

The stereo sounds fantastic, though, and is well-equipped to transmit the sonic capacities of current production. I really noticed this as fun.s’ 2012 release Some Nights became the regular soundtrack for the family rush-hour crosstown trek to the dojo during the summer months.

With The Format’s Interventions and Lullabies playing such a significant role last spring, I was originally planning on putting off this more recent entry in Nate Reuss’ catalog, going for a more chronological approach. Thanks to the car, though, finance was particularly tight early this summer.  Finding a copy of Some Nights that I could purchase on trade-in was much easier than other more obscure albums in his career.

These two albums ring awfully close to each other, so it is hard not to make comparisons. The distinctions between the two, however, are far more interesting. The most fundamental difference is that Interventions and Lullabies was intended to capture the liveness of a band in a rock setting. Conversely, judging by its production approach, Some Nights is intended as a studio project.  Now, I have previously pointed out what I saw as a similarity between Reuss’ voice and that of the great Freddie Mercury, and I think it is impossible to ignore this resemblance on Some Nights.  Because their work is composed with the studio in mind, fun. has the latitude to operate within a nearly orchestral scope that clearly recalls Queen. In fact, if Mercury were still alive, I don't have to work too hard to imagine Queen having a late-period 21st century comeback with a tune not unlike the album’s Lion King-esque title track.  Might need a guitar solo, though.



One thing that Some Nights certainly sets in stone for me - Reuss is easily my favorite vocalist and lyricist in recent memory. Even on some of the album’s weaker tracks (and there are some) Reuss inevitably finds space to bare his soul and take musical risks. In Some Nights, for example, uses autotuning conventions to push his voice to a nearly instrumental extreme (and in the process, taking on the role of the aforementioned guitar solo). While his experiments hardly put him in Mike Patton’s league, he is trying out some interesting things with his voice and in a high-access arena, which I appreciate. Even when he isn’t pushing his voice to the brink of noise, as the lead singer of fun. he doesn’t fail to convince.



As I have delved further into the history of these bands, I have noticed that many longtime Format fans, armed with the accusation that Reuss sold out, are overly critical of fun. I admit that my investment in Reuss as an artist is merely months long, rather than decades, so perhaps my perspective is skewed, but I don’t quite see how Some Nights betrays his principles as an artist. It is, in actuality, pretty adventurous for a contemporary pop album. If you think about it, the band’s breakout anthem We Are Young is a rather unlikely hit. The song’s shifting tempos immediately disqualify it from the dance floor, its structure is non-standard, and its double-timed choruses exclude all but the most nimble-tongued fan from singing along. Yet its message, delivery, and compositional structure is inarguably credible and perhaps even moving.



The vast majority of talented musicians bang their head against the wall and never even get close to the big time, especially these days. Every now and then, though, good things happen to the right people. Nate Reuss and the other members of fun. have created an excellent collection of contemporary pop music with Some Nights, and a few of the album’s finer moments have miraculously become part of contemporary mass culture. Again, not many can readily don the mantle of being Queen's successors.  That is a heavy crown to bear.  If anyone is poised to, however, fun. has my vote.  

The Format: Awkward Reflections and Profound Nostalgia

It was probably about 2006 or so when a friend of mine introduced me to The Format. I had just completed an academic project on nostalgia in cover bands, and I found myself regularly attending shows by a Queen tribute band called Queen for a Day. As you might guess, the person in the proverbial hot seat there was the lead singer. Freddie Mercury was arguably one of the greatest rock singers that ever lived, and his incredible prowess usually brings even the most subtle weaknesses in a vocalist into startling focus. The lead singer, Gregory Finsley, did respectable imitation. On one occasion, however, the band uttered the fateful words “we’d like to do an original,” and it was, predictably, a bit awkward.  In this singular instance, however, Finsley dropped his façade and let his natural voice be heard.

The point being, my first impression of The Format was that they reminded me of Queen for a Day when their lead singer freed himself of the nostalgic idiosyncrasies of Freddie Mercury. This was certainly enough to grab my attention. I liked the album I was given, but it was on a burned CD, and because I am the way that I am, I could not take it seriously until I had my own first-generation copy. I put it on my Amazon list.



Then, predictably, it sat there for quite awhile. It even was removed and added to the list on several occasions. The recent emergence and popularity of the band Fun., however, finally forced my hand. Nate Ruess, who was the lead singer of The Format, fronts this increasingly visible and musically interesting band. Their rising popularity made me feel a little guilty about never following through on The Format when the first opportunity arose. One thing led to another and I ended up with Interventions and Lullabies under the Christmas tree this year.

I guess it’s because so much time has now elapsed, but I don’t hear the Freddie Mercury comparison quite so strongly any more. If anything, Reuss seems like a less whiney, bolder Ben Folds, and I only make such a strong point of it above as the greatest of compliments.  Although I think that Reuss could do a solid Mercury impersonation if pressed, I believe that he is quite possibly the real deal on his own.  Along with co-writer Sam Means, he crafts and delivers genuine, direct, uniquely creative power pop that is both entertaining and thought-provoking.

It’s the street-level topics that The Format tackles in their lyrics that bestows Interventions and Lullabies with depth. In my book, lyrics often take a back seat to musical effectiveness, but on this album, musical effectiveness is inextricably wedded to its lyric content. Considering Reuss’ relatively young age when Interventions and Lullabies was released, his observations on life, death, music, fame, and nostalgia are intimate and often profound.



Because The Format were most active during the early 00s and gained more notoriety in retrospect (like another great pop band we all know and love), there is not much “vintage” video footage out there of the band playing. I did happen across a set of videos, however, that were somewhat disturbing in their familiarity. They are of The Format awkwardly playing an amazing set to virtually no one, which pretty much sums up what it was like to play in a band in that abysmal time between the record company monopoly that shattered in the late 90s and the independent artist models that bands subsist on today.



If I would have discovered Interventions and Lullabies back when it was first released in 2003, it would have complimented a couple of great underground pop albums that I had in rotation during that time.  As it is, though, nearly ten years after its release, it delivers so well on so many levels that I can't bring myself to take it out of the player. 

A Lament for the Death of the Album

Photo Credit: Kate Wurtzel

The physical manifestation of a recording has always influenced popular music forms. Even today, our musical attention span is affected by the three and a half minute running time of the first wax cylinder recordings. For a long time, the recording industry revolved around this “single" format. Later, however, when the LP evolved, artists started to weave unifying narratives through the lyrical and musical elements of its individual tracks.  Its roughly 45 minute playing length began to be carefully sequenced in terms of a beginning, middle, and end. The album was born.

The album is my standard unit of musical consumption. It survived the portable but ultimately lo-fi trend of the tape and found a home in the late 80s on the CD in a slightly altered form.  Two sides became one, and album lengths tentatively began to stretch to fill an 80 minute capacity.

I had a few LPs and quite a few tapes for the walkman, but the CD was my medium of choice when I became a serious music fan. I began my CD collection in 1986 when they were touted as the ultimate in indestructible lossless hi-fi (lies, lies all!). Record enthusiasts bemoaned their lack of analog warmth, but we scoffed and thoughtlessly hit the “next track” button without fully understanding that this action laid the seeds of the album's demise.

Today, I almost always listen to an album from beginning to end. I never skip tracks, and I try to consider the context and potential of each individual song as it relates to the larger work. I find great satisfaction in this practice.  For example, When Wayne’s World just about beat Bohemian Rhapsody into the ground in 1992, I always found that the song was still profoundly moving nestled towards the end of Queen’s truly classic album A Night at the Opera.  I still do.



From my perspective, then, it seems that the Mayans were partially right about 2012. The apocalypse is coming.  Major labels are considering discontinuing CD production this year, which is a disturbing but unsurprising announcement. Simultaneously, streaming music services such as Spotify and (a major resource of this blog) Grooveshark have come under fire by what it is left of the music industry.  Their transparent desire to maintain the status quo, now the downloadable MP3, squeezes out music consumers using outdated, shortsighted, and intimidating methods.

Feels like Napster and the CD all over again doesn't it?

More to the point, although I am attached to the physical object of the CD, I might be able to let go of it if the delivery device is sufficient.  After all, I’ve already begrudgingly accepted a future of MP3s filled with slushy hi-hats and guitars compressed past the point of distinction. If I can see artwork, organize songs into albums, and enjoy tracks that segue together without a startling bump, I'd probably be relatively satisfied.

On the other hand, perhaps I’ll just revert to the trendy solution of purchasing a turntable to play "high-end" vinyl at exorbitant costs like I did when I was in sixth grade.  That'd be real cool.

Of greater concern is what this wholesale switch to "softcopy" will mean to the integrity of the album as a creative format. Without the constraints of a physical object, be it LP, CD, tape, or 8-track, the organizing principle of the album will most likely dissolve. Sequencing and unity will become pointless if there is no longer the expectation to refine 45-75 minutes worth of music into something cohesive.  Songs will be published as online, playlist-ready singles without consideration of a larger narrative potential. What was once like writing a novel essentially becomes more like blogging.

Some musicians, like the Flaming Lips and their recent “24-hour song” 7 Skies H3, will undoubtedly explore the limits of this freedom (the "hardcopy" version of this project is a USB drive mounted inside a human skull - promo shot to the right!).  It is also possible, however, that the music scene will, by and large, crumble into a deluge of unrefined “singles,” drowning out more unified and cohesive efforts in a sea of shortened attention spans.  As a representation of an artistic endeavor that is cultivated over a span of time, the album is very quickly headed towards anachronism.  Abandoning the CD format seems like its death knell.