Creativity Quote by Brian May

Brian May isn’t just praising The Beatles; he’s drawing a hard boundary around what “greatest” is allowed to mean in rock history. Coming from the guitarist of Queen, a band that’s often treated as Beatles-adjacent in the pop canon, the line lands like an insider’s veto. It’s less fan worship than a professional assessment: songwriting range, harmonic invention, studio experimentation, cultural penetration. May is staking the claim that the Beatles weren’t merely a top-tier band; they were a category.

The “including Oasis” tag is the dagger-with-a-smile. Oasis are an easy shorthand for Britpop’s loudest Beatles evangelists, a group that built myth and marketing on the idea that they were the next in line. By naming them, May quietly punctures the ladder-climbing narrative rock culture loves: the fantasy that each generation produces a rightful successor. He’s also commenting on a particular British habit of turning bands into football teams, where lineage matters as much as music. In that frame, Oasis aren’t being singled out as uniquely inferior; they’re being used as the most obvious test case for hype.

The subtext is humility and hierarchy at once. May positions himself as someone with no need to exaggerate peers to sound generous. He’s guarding a shared reference point, the Beatles as the north star that makes all later greatness legible. It’s a canon-making move that flatters the past, deflates the present, and reminds listeners that influence isn’t the same as equivalence.