Now that 2026 is still new and naive, here’s a song to power us through the days that inevitably will fall short of our daydreams.

We Are The Champions by the iconic British band Queen, released in 1977, is more than a sports anthem, it’s a victory anthem and a song of resilience.

I’ve paid my dues

Time after time

I’ve done my sentence

But committed no crime

And bad mistakes

I’ve made a few

I’ve had my share of sand kicked in my face

But I’ve come through

(We’re gonna go on and on and on and on)

We are the champions, my friend

And we’ll keep on fighting till the end....

Every Queen fan has a favourite, but most swear by the classic Bohemian Rhapsody, 1975, which is legit. It’s a genre-bending epic of a song, complex and unforgettable, both for its lyrics and sound. No wonder the 2018 biopic on Queen was titled Bohemian Rhapsody.

We Are The Champions, which has “stadium anthem” written all over it, is loved for its rousing quality. It has Freddie Mercury’s lyrics — as did Bohemian Rhapsody — and he sang the song and played the piano like he only could. You had Brian May on the electric guitar, Roger Taylor on drums and John Deacon on the bass guitar. Brian and Roger were also the backing vocals.
“I was thinking about football when I wrote it,” Freddie said in a 1978 interview. “I wanted a participation song, something that the fans could latch on to. Of course, I’ve given it more theatrical subtlety than an ordinary football chant.”

You can hear the collective roar in Freddie’s voice. And yet, it’s also a personal song. The clever switch between “I” and “we” ensures that the song is as much about you as it is about your people. We Will Rock You, another Queen classic, written by Brian, has a similar universal-personal truth.

We Are The Champions has lived many lives. It was an official theme song for the 1994 FIFA World Cup in the US, three years after Freddie’s death from AIDS on November 24, 1991. It has been covered by countless artistes who have failed to recreate the magic of Freddie’s astonishing vocal range. It has been reimagined as memes and GIFs.

In 2016, Donald Trump — then a billionaire testing political waters — repeatedly used the song at the Republican National Convention, drawing strong objections from the surviving band members.

And that brings us to the buck-toothed legend, Freddie. Born Farrokh Bulsara to Indian Parsi parents in Tanzania (Zanzibar then) on September 5, 1946, he studied in a boarding school in India’s Panchgani where he got nicknamed Freddie, went back to Tanzania in the early 1960s and to the UK in 1964 when a revolution broke out against the Sultan of Zanzibar. A pianist-singer and a student of design, he joined a few bands before forming Queen in 1970 with Brian and Roger — John came on board a year later.

Freddie thought his four extra teeth — incisors — enhanced his four-octave vocal range. No, Freddie, it was all you.

Sulagana Biswas