15 April

Brian May and Queen are a different type of hero for our times. Relentlessly smart and curious and inventive, and decent. And able to shamelessly access the power of magnificence and spectacle at a time when these were considered uncool, while at the same time speaking to both elites and the common listener. They transcended cool. Queen isn't often recognised for the genius of combining all of those things, mostly because they were so smart, in an industry that's so often fairly stupid, and obsessed with petty notions of cool. For many music is the banner of their youth, and the same territorial crap dominates their thinking about it well into adulthood, into what's worthy or cool and what isn't. It's all the same boring high school politics. Queen paid no attention to any of that at all. And Brian never stops. Crinoline.