Career
Queen of Japan's 1999 debut EP Mercury Rising (a reference to Freddie Mercury) features New Wave-sounding versions of Queen songs and is probably the basis for the group's name.
The trio's versions of "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" and "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy" (originally hits for Joan Jett and Rod Stewart, respectively) appear on several different compilation CDs. Their version of "I Was Made for Loving You" (a hit for KISS) was featured on the award-winning short movie Icicle melt starring Greta Scacchi.
Some of their cover songs, such as "Mother" (written and originally recorded by John Lennon) and "Wanted Man" (written by Bob Dylan for Johnny Cash) infuse an electronic sound into songs which previously had a different style. They have also covered songs by Soft Cell, The Who, Olivia Newton-John, Marvin Gaye, Duran Duran, Thin Lizzy, Klaus Nomi and Frank Zappa.
Remixes of Queen of Japan's work have appeared on a CD by DJ Keoki. Their music has also been featured at Fashion Week and appears on two CDs of music thereof.
One reviewer writes:
Queen of Japan manage to inject their brand of sleazy sexuality into this revivalist template. I can’t say this is original stuff, but in all its worrying energy and zany spunk, it’s actually quite a lot of fun. At times it even reminds me of Blondie (which is a good thing!) if their over-reliance on cheesy retro sounds was curbed slightly, they might even stumble across a decent track every once in a while.
A review for the CD Foreign Politics describes:
You'd think that after the success of the sex-citing cover CD Head-Rush, (an album of full of electric-socket boogie-nights versions, which could be mistakingly described as electroclash) the glitter-spangled threesome would carry on playing the high-voltage karaoke-sex-machine for a generation who grew up between Saturday Night Fever & Flashdance, Repo Man & Alien But Queen of Japan are not just your run-of-the-mill cheeky anarchistic electro-karaoke dandies A tour de force in discology."
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