10 Musicians Whose Careers Were Destroyed By Just One Song

Okay let’s get one thing clear, Queen’s career never really ended. One of the world’s best-selling bands and often rightly named one of its greatest, the glam rock icons enjoyed tremendous success in their lifetime and even more posthumous acclaim after the death of their iconic frontman.

But…

Although vocal titan/ walking embodiment of charisma Freddy Mercury and his band never entirely lost their careers and remained well-loved even after his untimely death, they were dealt a crushing blow by the release of I Want to Break Free.

Coming hot on the heels of the band’s early success in the states, American television’s wholesale refusal to broadcast the music video for I Want to Break Free limited their international success and hastened the band’s unofficial break up. Unfamiliar with the culturally specific soaps being spoofed (and just broadly culturally homophobic at the time), US censors couldn’t get past the video’s cross-dressing content.

And so it was that, much like a certain pyjama-clad singer later in this list, Queen’s potential success was doomed by an ill-fated promo lacking sufficient machismo. If only a loveable slacker and his mates could revive interest in the band with a backseat karaoke rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody…