The “most arrogant” song Freddie Mercury ever wrote: “I wanted a participation song”

Posted On November 8, 2025November 8, 2025

For all of the doors that he broke down in rock and roll, Freddie Mercury had every right to be a diva if he wanted to.

Despite being incredibly softspoken, something happened within him whenever he went out onstage, and judging by his performance at Live Aid, there wasn’t a single crowd of people that he was comfortable standing in front of. But even with all of that adulation being thrown his way, he knew that what mattered more than any of that applause was the records they made.

The albums were the ones that would stand the test of time, and from the first notes of their debut record, Queen were already on a high. All of those layered guitar parts already made them sound like an answer to Led Zeppelin, but when Mercury opened his mouth to sing, he was the epitome of what a frontman should be. Most people could try their hand at covering any of his songs, but even if everything was well within their range, they were never going to sing them like Mercury.

But Mercury knew that all of those songs meant nothing if there was no crowd to show for it. Every person in that audience mattered just as much as the four guys onstage whenever they performed, and looking at the way ‘We Will Rock You’ unfolds, the band needed to have something that the crowd could be involved in half the time.

Although ‘We Are the Champions’ is a lot more extravagant by comparison, Mercury wasn’t looking to make his own personal war cry. Whenever he performed, he wanted everyone at the venue to feel that sense of accomplishment that he was singing about, but he could also put his hand up and admit when he started reaching for ideas that were a bit more arrogant than others.

Despite being one of the most universal celebration songs of all time, Mercury knew that there was at least a tiny bit of self-servingness in the lyrics as well, saying, “‘We Are The Champions’ is the most egotistical and arrogant song I’ve ever written. I was thinking about football when I wrote it. I wanted a participation song, something the fans could latch on to. It was aimed at the masses. I wanted to write something that everyone could sing along to, like a football chant. And at the same time, I thought it would be nice to have a winning song that’s meant for everybody.”

But ‘We Are the Champions’ has gone beyond the realm of braggadocio and has entered a certain realm that only a handful of songs get to go. Rarely is a song synonymous with one specific feeling, but Mercury sang this tune so well that it practically is the soundtrack to victory in the same way that ‘Happy’ by Pharrell Williams became the soundtrack to happiness and Marvin Gaye’s ‘Let’s Get It On’ became the soundtrack to sex.

It’s impossible to count how many times the song has been used in media, but if you’re looking for the truest version of the song, it always comes back to those final moments of Live Aid. Queen had put on one of the greatest performances that any band would ever get to see, and when Mercury finally holds out that last note of their set, there’s no denying that you’re seeing one of the greatest frontmen of all time at the peak of his powers.

So, yes, the song is arrogant as all hell, but was anyone ever going to hold that against someone like FREDDIE FREAKIN’ MERCURY? Music was never about a sense of competition, but if they were to give out awards on this kind of showmanship, Mercury is the golden Olympian athlete of rock and roll that could proudly wear the crowd as champion of the world.

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