Queen are a band that exists, for some reason, hailing from the trusty ol’ town of London, England. They’re probably most famous for “Bohemian Rhapsody,” a song that would end up soundtracking a key scene in Wayne’s World, a movie ironically set in America and just about as quintessentially American as you can get.
In general, their m.o. was pretty, uh, weird — really androgynous, busy and cutesy songs that seem more tailored for a 1970s running of the Westminster Dog Show than a sports bar or bike rally. “Fat Bottomed Girls” is the exception.
According to a post on Quora, “Fat Bottomed Girls,” the creative work of guitarist Brian May (with the vast bulk of the band’s tunes having been penned by late singer Freddie Mercury), was written about the “‘fat-bottomed’ girls, and later guys, coming out of Freddie’s dressing room” and “is a tongue-in-cheek type of song, not to be taken seriously.” Well, then Freddie Mercury should get an Emmy for his performance here, because da**ed if he doesn’t sell it! His emphasis and adamancy with which he professes his love to these heifer harlots is potent enough to propel “Fat Bottomed Girls” into all-time elite status, within classic rock. It’s my favorite song, in particular, almost BECAUSE it’s so anti-Queen: it’s straight-ahead, getting by on riffs and melodies instead of ostentatious style, and the campy allegiance to fluffy drama is replaced by a testament to simple pleasures in life.
Just a month ago I was on a trip from my malaise-ridden and relatively uninspiring hometown and current residence of South Bend, Indiana, to a cabin up in the mountains in Pennsylvania, where I went in order to finish reading my book. I took the scenic route, down US-30 the whole way, so it took me 11 and a half hours to get there. By the time I finally reached the general area where I was staying, a little bit east of Pittsburgh, I had the weird craving to go to a strip club. This is something I normally don’t do.
Anyway, it ended up that there were no cabarets anywhere near and it was past nine on a Monday night, so I ended up feeling tired, looking for some food. I happened upon this bar. The tender was, well, just that — young, thin, beautiful and articulate. She wasn’t someone with whom I’d pegged myself as having a chance. She got to talking to me, though, perhaps taking to my accent or the look of freedom I had in my eyes, telling me all these crazy stories (one was about her stepdad grabbing a dude by the balls at a Steelers game and yanking them down). At one point I went to the bathroom and when I got back, this ultra-cute chick with a shaved head and a sports bra under a cut-off t-shirt was sitting in the chair next to mine, her really fine friend next to that. And I was thinking, da**, I just wanted to date that bartender. I don’t need this sensory overload. So I just went home and crashed. But for some reason “Fat Bottomed Girls” is just the perfect song to listen to when I think back on that — it’s the perfect bookend to that two-week break from work I got that allowed me that trip, and the ideal, basic but muscular musical vehicle to fructify that terrible craving I’d had to go to a strip club, or visit some women in an inappropriate way, in some regard. But I mean, hey. Maybe sometimes they wanna have some fun too, ya know? And why wouldn’t it be that only a fictitious song could aptly step in and perfectly soundtrack our fantasies?
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