Of late, we’re listening to a lot of podcasts. We dropped four months behind the Church of Wittertainment and during our catch up came across all sorts of new wonders.

One of them is Queenpod, into its second season as the podcast that’s a thorough plunge into Queen’s history. Hurray!

Queenpod is All About Queen

Nothing to do with The Queen, of course, as you won’t find us ranting about the monarchy much here. Frankly, we consider Queen a far more precious entity than the Royals.

We had a big phase with the band around 2000 and really have been enjoying their music again recently, as it’s so bloody upbeat.

The show is into its second season and posts a new episode every week. The goal? To cover Queen’s entire back catalogue!

Every single song in pedantic detail. Groovy.

Hosting the show is Rohan Acharya. And there are full-time guests! These are comedian Sooz Kempner, documentarian Simon Lupton, and comedian John Robins.

Here’s the most recent episode from 7th April 2021. Yes!

Straight up, the podcast is excellent. These are four Queen experts and superfans with a great deal of knowledge at their hands.

And they quickly drew our attention to lesser-known Queen songs, such as ’39 off the A Night at the Opera album from 1975.

Bohemian Rhapsody gets some detailed treatment, naturally, and listening to it again you do forget how brilliantly ludicrous the song is. 

The operatic mid-section, replete with soaring falsetto from Roger Taylor, is really bloody exhilerating. 

But the podcast has also reminded us of some of the excellent songs we’d forgotten all about. 

Primarily the rather glorious Old Fashioned Lover Boy. Here they are miming the song on Top of the Pops. 

They wanted to play it for real (like, you know, live) but the BBC stopped them. Bastards.

Now, of course, this isn’t some illegal, underground shindig where they’re breaking all possible copyright laws. 

Queen has kindly provided the Queenpod podcast crew with full access to its back catalogue, of course, so the hosts can play tracks as they reminisce and rate each song.

There are also many titbits about the band we found pretty charming to learn about.

Brian May, for example, is extremely intelligent. As well as a gifted musician, he has a PhD in astrophysics.

Drummer Roger Taylor and bassist John Deacon (who’s been out of the limelight since 1997, having essentially retired) also have a great deal of intelligence and capability.

Deacon once went off and learned the double bass in three days flat.

But, of course, Freddie Mercury dominates a lot of proceedings. Along with his singing voice, he was a larger-than-life character full of charisma and ready wit.

Although, despite his flamboyant stage persona, he was actually very shy and retiring. Being on stage brought out his inner extrovert. 

One of our favourite Queenpod stories involves a post-gig drugs check by the police on Queen in the 1970s.

A police officer asked Mercury if he had any drugs on his person. The singer responded with, “Don’t be so impertinent!”

Indeed, Mr. Mecury. Indeed. 

Anyway, if this is your type of thing there are 24+ hours of chat here about one of the world’s most influential bands. Worth a whistle? Yes.