Saying that Nirvana are better than Queen is similar to saying that orgasms sting less acutely than pant-wasps, not least because Nirvana made good records which are enjoyable to listen to and Queen are dreck.
It’s a fact, don’t @ me.
Anyway, science (science!) have confirmed this basic universal truth via a new analysis of songs by researchers from Goldsmiths, University of London, led by music AI expert Professor Mick Grierson, which concluded that ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ is the most iconic song of all time.
Number 2 was John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’, number three was, confusingly, U2’s ‘One’, Michael Jackson’s ‘Billie Jean’ was fourth, and Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was wrongly placed at five instead of at nothingth.
Oh, and before you ask: the Beatles were in there, at number six with ‘Hey Jude’.
As an aside, Dr Grierson found there were certain words which were especially common in the songs on the list, including “love”, ‘baby” and “nah” – although the aforementioned inclusion of ‘Hey Jude’ probably pushed that nah-count way, way up.
Since iconicness isn’t a thing that can be measured they went with running the songs from seven all time best of lists from respected music publications through software which analyised the key, tempo, lyrics and “timbral variety, and sonic variance” which is a fancy way to say “sound”.
Now, this was a British study using largely British music lists – as Spin points out, this explains why Oasis’ highest ranking song is the passionately Brit-loved ‘Live Forever’ (at number seventeen) rather than the international hit ‘Wonderwall’ – but even so we could assume that it’s even more parochial and UK-centric than would be the case with international data.
And thus in a better-weighted study, Queen should be even lower. Maybe even last. That would make sense.
Because Queen are awful.
Again, don’t @ me.
