24 October 1978 – “Fat Bottomed Girls” is released as a single in a double-A side with “Bicycle Race” by Elektra in the USA. 🇺🇸
For the first time in Queen’s history, the lead off single from their latest album, ‘Jazz,’ blatantly tackled an issue that they’d previously avoided: sex. “We lost some of our audience with that. I was told, ‘How could you do it? It doesn’t go with your spiritual side.’ But my answer is that the physical side is just as much a part of as the spiritual or intellectual side. It’s fun! I’ll make no apologies. All music skirts around sex, sometimes very directly. Ours doesn’t. In our music, sex is either implied or referred to semi-jokingly, but it’s always there.” (Brian May)
Mojo Magazine asked Brian how Freddie could deliver such a convincing heterosexual performance on this song. He replied: “On the face of it, it’s a heterosexual song because it’s called ‘Fat Bottomed Girls,’ but I was totally aware of Freddie’s proclivities and the fact he was going to sing it. Plus, some of the inspiration for the song came from stuff that I saw in Freddie’s life as well as my own. So it’s actually not so much of a heterosexual song as you might think (laughs). It’s a sort of pansexual song. There are so many ways you can take it.”
- Brian wrote this fun, cheeky song. It reached #24 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the USA.
