#1 on the Billboard Hot 100: February 23, 1980 through March 15, 1980.
#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: February 23, 1980 through March 8, 1980.#1 on the U.K. Chart: Never.
Sometimes greatness occurs quickly and from odd sources. Freddie Mercury reportedly wrote this song in about ten minutes and credits the fact that he is not a very good guitar player for it being as good as it is. In other words, because he is a crappy guitarist, Mercury wrote a better song. Given that I am a far crappier guitarist than Mercury was, I suppose that everyone should be expecting my hit record soon.
The Game was the first (and for a long time only) Queen album I owned. I had it on cassette tape, which seemed perfectly reasonable at the time. I played that cassette until the tape stretched and Freddie Mercury's voice on Play the Game sounded decidedly off-key, and to be perfectly honest, Crazy Little Thing Called Love is probably my least favorite song on the the album. The only song that competes with it for the bottom spot is Don't Try Suicide, a song that was way too blatantly didactic to be all that good. Apropos of pretty much nothing, when I was in high school, I made a mix tape to listen to on my Walkman while I was warming up before races, and Rock It (Prime Jive) was on that cassette, but this song wasn't.
Even though this was one of the band's biggest hits (as one of only two Queen songs that reached #1 on the Billboard charts), this song just feels out of place to me, and doesn't really sound like it should be a Queen song. The fact that this was one of their most commercially successful songs instead of something like Somebody to Love, or We Will Rock You, or Bohemian Rhapsody, or Radio Ga Ga just seems wrong. It is a perfectly serviceable song - even the worst Queen songs are pretty good songs - but it is just a rockabilly Elvis tribute, and that shouldn't have turned out to be one of the milestones in the career of a band as good as Queen.
Previous Musical Monday: Cruisin' by Smokey Robinson
Previous #1 on the Billboard Hot 100: Do That to Me One More Time by Captain and Tennille
Subsequent #1 on the Billboard Hot 100: Another Brick in the Wall (Part II) by Pink Floyd
Previous #1 on the Cash Box Top 100: Cruisin' by Smokey Robinson
Subsequent #1 on the Cash Box Top 100: Longer by Dan Fogelberg
List of #1 Singles from the Billboard Hot 100 for 1980-1989
List of #1 Singles from the Cash Box Top 100 for 1980-1989
List of #1 Singles on the U.K. Chart for 1980-1989
Queen 1980s Project Musical Monday Home
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