Keep Yourself Alive

"Keep Yourself Alive" is a song by British rock band Queen. Written by guitarist Brian May, it is the opening track on the band's debut album Queen (1973). It was released as Queen's first single along with "Son and Daughter" as the B-side. "Keep Yourself Alive" was largely ignored upon its release and failed to chart on either side of the Atlantic.

In 2008, Rolling Stone rated the song thirty-first on its list of "The 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time".

Writing and recording

According to Mark Hodkinson, author of Queen: The Early Years, "Keep Yourself Alive" was conceived on acoustic guitars during Queen's practice sessions at Imperial College and the garden at Ferry Road in 1970. At the time Queen had not yet found a permanent bassist; the group consisted of guitarist Brian May, singer Freddie Mercury and drummer Roger Taylor. In a radio special about their 1977 album News of the World, May said he had penned the lyrics thinking of them as ironic and tongue-in-cheek, but their sense was completely changed when Freddie Mercury sang them.

Queen

A queen is a female monarch. Queen may refer to:

In government and monarchy

Reflexive pronoun

In language, a reflexive pronoun, sometimes simply called a reflexive, is a pronoun that is preceded or followed by the noun, adjective, adverb or pronoun to which it refers (its antecedent) within the same clause.

In English specifically, a reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that ends in self or selves, and is an object that refers to a previously named noun or pronoun. Reflexive pronouns take the same forms as intensive pronouns: myself, yourself, himself, ourselves, itself, themselves, yourselves

In generative grammar, a reflexive pronoun is an anaphor that must be bound by its antecedent (see binding). In a general sense, it is a noun phrase that obligatorily gets its meaning from another noun phrase in the sentence. Different languages have different binding domains for reflexive pronouns, according to their structure.

Origins and usage

In Indo-European languages, the reflexive pronoun has its origins in Proto-Indo-European. In some languages, the distinction between the normal object and reflexive pronouns exists mainly in the third person: whether one says "I like me" or "I like myself", there is no question that the object is the same person as the subject; but, in "They like them(selves)", there can be uncertainty about the identity of the object unless a distinction exists between the reflexive and the nonreflexive. In some languages, this distinction includes genitive forms: see, for instance, the Danish examples below. In languages with a distinct reflexive pronoun form, it is often gender-neutral.

Alive

Alive may refer to:

Publications

Films

Freddie Mercury

Freddie Mercury (born Farrokh Bulsara; 5 September 1946 – 24 November 1991) was a British singer, songwriter and record producer, widely known as the lead vocalist and songwriter of the rock band Queen — and widely known for his flamboyant stage persona and four-octave vocal range.

Mercury wrote, composed and performed numerous hits for Queen ("Bohemian Rhapsody," "Killer Queen," "Somebody to Love," "Don't Stop Me Now," "Crazy Little Thing Called Love," and "We Are the Champions."); occasionally served as a producer and guest musician (piano or vocals) for other artists; and concurrently led a solo career while performing with Queen.

Mercury was born of Persian descent in Tanzania and grew up there and in India until his mid-teens, before moving with his family to Middlesex, England — ultimately forming the band Queen in 1970 with Brian May and Roger Taylor. Mercury died in 1991 at age 45 from complications from AIDS, having acknowledged the day before his death that he'd contracted the disease.