Everybody knows Killer Queen was about John's fondness for strippers in strip clubs in the early 2000s. Freddie used to ask John, "Hey John, how were the strippers last night?", to which John used to reply, "They were killer, queen".
This is the first time I've "replied" to ANYTHING as a newbie on Queenzone (but I'm a virtual scholar re: Queen, dears, and I mean that literally, too: on Genius.com I'm the #3 Queen "scholar", and a fairly new unpaid editor, so it's thanks to the soundtrack for the Bo-Rap biopic and the more recent live albums-Rainbo and Odeon).
So where's the post re: John's fondness for strippers substantiated as perhaps a catalyst to KQ's lyrics? Because it's impossible and improbable at the time "Killer Queen" was written/recorded. This has probably been noted:
Obviously Freddie was already pissed off at the Trident guys ("Flick of the Wrist": Killer Queen was supposed to be a double A-side, but by default "Flick of the Wrist" was relegated to a B-side, which I find kind of ironic, given it's ...).
Certainly somewhere in this forum someone has written about how Freddie felt "pimp'd out" by management, even BEFORE Killer Queen became a hit. So of course, four well-educated CLASSY rock musicians were essentially, or soon would be (more-so?) at the time make a "killing" financially, but not reap the benefits. However, KQ is way too playful lyrically for this connotation. "Flick of the Wrist" is NOT. Again, however, Freddie's famous quote about "classy people" I believe has more depth and is less flippant than it seems, because I do think he was sending a message to Queen's "financial mis-managers" at the time. Fact checkers, holders of substantive knowledge: lend me your replies!
Genius lyrics allows "contributors" and "editors" and others "annotate" lines and/or groups of lines from song lyrics with regard to their meaning. I used this to go-to-town on my own fun interpretation of "Killer Queen", and was able to turn it into a "bio" on the song (given its inclusion on Bo-Rap's soundtrack), for FUN:
https://genius.com/15536392I don't claim to have any insight into what Killer Queen is about, but the funniest thing was Eric Hall claiming it to be written about him and then watching Paul Gambaccini's face as he was told what Eric Hall claimed ... THAT was an epic moment in one of the documentaries I saw.
I know many folks don't care for Gambaccini but I really enjoy his input on interviews and documentaries I've watched. And I know the complaints about the stories all being the same have been mentioned, but there can't be 'new' stories since Freddie's been dead close to 30 yrs now.
