Queen deemed too extreme for pre-teens

No strangers to controversy, Queen is back in the headlines for a faux scandal that is giving conservatives an excuse to express their anger. IA's music man, David Kowalski, reports.

IN THE NEWS this week, new upstart streaming platform and music website for children, Yoto, has found itself with more free press coverage than ever before — by accident rather than design. The platform is designed for children under 12 with audiobooks and a bespoke radio station playing kid-friendly tunes.

It has, however, raised the ire of many armchair critics by offering Queen’s mega-selling Greatest Hits Volume 1 album for sale for use on their dedicated playback devices. It comes with a catch. The platform’s version of the album omits the 1978 hit single, ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’.

Cue the standard cries of “cancel culture”, “woke censorship” and “a revisionist rewriting of history”. It turns out, however, that the band members themselves were asked by Yoto about this and they agreed to drop the track from the album for younger listeners. They have not given any illuminating reasons as to why.

Brian May, who, for all intents and purposes, still leads the group and who wrote the song, presumably okayed this and is happy with one of his most well-known songs dropped from the list. Is it worse lyrically for little ears than the dark verses of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’?

For that, the platform has issued a warning to parents:

Please note that the lyrics in some of these songs contain adult themes, including occasional references to violence and drugs.

These are the original and unedited recordings. Whilst no swear words are used, parental discretion is advised when playing this content to or around younger children.

I will concede the song contains one of Brian May’s best performances as a guitar player. It may have been intended as tongue-in-cheek, however, I’ve always been a little uncomfortable about the sentiments towards the female body shape in ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’. I would prefer to dig into one of the many other great songs Dr May has contributed to the Queen catalogue.

Amazing, Grace!

Toiling away under my radar for the last few years has been Newcastle artist Grace Aberhart. She is a singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, however, she has made a name for herself as a bass player. She has made waves on Instagram with her bass chops playing Stevie Wonder’s ‘Sir Duke’. Her latest original track, ‘Early’, digs deep into her personal struggles to create a soul-baring banger of a tune that Dave Ruby Howe of Triple J’s Unearthed Radio described as ‘the whole package is cased in crunch wrap!’

Gone but never forgotten

The Sydney indie music scene has been moved by the passing of a couple of giants of the scene in the 1980s.

After a long illness, singer-songwriter Louis Tillett left behind a legacy of incredible music that is ripe for re-evaluation. His long career included his work as a solo artist and as a member of Paris Green, as well as The Wet Taxis. It was particularly sad that he had to sell his entire recorded catalogue to fund his medical treatment and even then, his efforts to offload his work were greeted with indifference and disdain.

His entire back catalogue has been made available again in the digital sphere and his deep tenor vocals and classy piano stylings can be heard forever more. Tillett’s 1986 album, Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell, is a class act from cover to cover, from which the jazz-influenced track ‘On Your Way Down’ comes.

We also lost the sweet-voiced Ron S Peno, lead vocalist of local indie darlings Died Pretty. Dynamic and unpredictable on stage, but quiet and unassuming off of it, Peno was best known for his keening vocals and poignant lyrics.

Writing in The Guardian, Andrew Stafford said that Died Pretty’s most highly regarded album, 1991’s Doughboy Hollow, was cruelly stifled in record stores because ‘The album quickly sold out — only for their label to fail to re-press it, stalling its momentum’.

The band had similar runs of bad luck for the rest of the '90s as they bounced from label to label for each subsequent album. The music, however, remains sublime. Died Pretty was truly a band that could craft beauty around an inner core of sadness, making music that strikes deeply in the listener’s heart and leaves an indelible stamp.

LISTEN TO THIS WEEKS SPECIALLY CURATED PLAYLIST BELOW:

David Kowalski is a writer, musician, educator, sound engineer and podcaster. His podcasts 'The Sound and the Fury Podcast' and 'Audio Cumulus' can be heard exclusively here. You can follow David on Twitter @sound_fury_pod.