Queen

Freddie Mercury's operatic tenor, Village People moustache, leather pants, bared hairy chest, and microphone-as-baton were the focal points of a band buttressed by Afro-touting guitar maven Brian May and the fat-bottomed rhythm section of bassist John Deacon and drummer Roger Taylor. Queen's legendary 1985 Live Aid concert performance — as Mercury led the fist-pumping throngs like some crazed cross between a demagogue and a wizard — saw them at their peak . . . that is, of course, if you don't count their unfathomable life-after-death career resurgence.

Our Queen Next Steps finds the band appealing to everyone's inner rock god.

Since Mike Myers and Dana Carvey performed their unforgettable lip-sync of "Bohemian Rhapsody" to their car radio in Wayne's World, Queen's stacked harmonies, funk flavor, and flick-your-mobile-phone sing-alongs have gone on to influence a vast lineup of post-modern-day rockers, from the Killers and Green Day to My Chemical Romance and Panic! At the Disco. Lesser-known songs, like "I'm in Love With My Car", perfectly capture the four-piece's campy, irony-laden approach, while "The Hero" from the Flash Gordon soundtrack captures their talent for awakening the rock star in all of us.

Humour and hard, heavy metal meet in Queen's Deep Cuts.

Steeped in the British music-hall tradition, Queen were capable of poking fun at themselves, whether it was the brave black humour of "I'm Going Slightly Mad" (sung by a terminally ill Mercury) or the old-fashioned show business values of "Let Me Entertain You". While their baroque approach seems to contradict the streamlined punk rock that followed their arrival, the band was equally adept at the screaming metal of "Gimme the Prize (Kurgens Theme)" or the souped-up rock 'n' roll of their ten-megaton cover of Elvis Presley's "Jailhouse Rock".

Queen's theatrical approach to arena-sized music leaps the stylistic divide between rock and opera, metal and funk, spare rockabilly and over-the-top bombast. "We Are the Champions" has become a sports anthem staple worldwide, as have "We Will Rock You" and "Another One Bites the Dust". The complex vocal arrangements of "Bohemian Rhapsody" have inspired a new wave of karaoke tributes, while "Fat Bottomed Girls" pokes fun at sexuality and "Radio Ga Ga" nods to the old-fashioned power of the airwaves. Now name-checked by hip bands as a seminal influence, Queen perfected a wry, very English sense of humour and operatic exaggeration that have been embraced by a whole new generation.