The band were noted for their musical diversity, multi-layered arrangements, vocal harmonies, and incorporation of audience participation into their live performances. Their 1985 Live Aid performance was voted the best live rock performance of all time in an industry poll.
Queen enjoyed success in the UK in the early 1970s with the albums Queen and Queen II, but it was with the release of Sheer Heart Attack in 1974 and A Night at the Opera the following year that the band gained international success. They have released fifteen studio albums, five live albums, and numerous compilation albums. May and Taylor have performed infrequently under the Queen name. From 2004 to 2009 they collaborated with Paul Rodgers, under the moniker Queen + Paul Rodgers.
Queen composed music that drew inspiration from many different genres of music, often with a tongue-in-cheek attitude. Among the genres they have been associated with are: dance/disco, glam rock, hard rock, heavy metal, pop rock, progressive rock and psychedelic rock. Queen also wrote songs that were inspired by genres that are not typically associated with rock, such as country, ragtime, opera, gospel, vaudeville and folk.
Sonic experimentation figured heavily in Queen's songs. A distinctive characteristic of Queen's music are the vocal harmonies which are usually composed of the voices of May, Mercury and Taylor best heard on the studio albums A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races. Some of the ground work for the development of this sound can be attributed to their former producer Roy Thomas Baker as well as their engineer Mike Stone. Besides vocal harmonies, Queen were also known for multi-tracking voices to imitate the sound of a large choir through overdubs. According to Brian May, there are over 180 vocal overdubs in "Bohemian Rhapsody". Many Queen songs were also written with audience participation in mind, such as "We Will Rock You" and "We Are the Champions".
