Queen on Friday kicked off their recently announced weekly YouTube video series, Queen The Greatest, with a three-minute episode focusing on the band’s debut single, “Keep Yourself Alive.”
As previously reported, the Queen The Greatest series celebrates the 50th anniversary of the band’s formation and will run for 50 weeks. Each episode will highlight memorable moments in the Queen’s career, chronologically, through classic and rare archival footage, photos and audio.
The debut episode discusses how “Keep Yourself Alive” was one of the earliest song’s written by the group. Written solely by guitarist Brian May, the tune wound up being the first track on Queen’s 1973 self-titled debut album. In a clip from a 2011 interview, we hear May explain that the meaning of the song often was misinterpreted.
“Strangely enough, the lyrics for ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ are meant to be kind of a comment, they’re meant to be slightly ironical.” he says. “Everyone always did think that ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ was just a jolly song about how great it is to be alive, but it’s actually more about asking the question ‘is there more to life than this?’ in a sense.”
The episode also features footage of an early promo video Queen shot for the song that the band rejected because they didn’t like the light-colored clothing they wore.
As the episode winds down, the narrator notes that “Keep Yourself Alive” went on to become a staple of Queen’s live set, and we then see footage of the band playing the tune at concerts in 1975, 1974 and 1981.
The second installment of the Queen The Greatest premieres Friday, March 26, at 8 a.m. ET, and will focus on the band’s 1974 hit, “Killer Queen,” and the group’s historic shows that year at London’s Rainbow Theatre.
By Matt Friedlander
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