Creativity Quote by John Deacon

Control is the quiet flex in John Deacon's line, and it lands precisely because it sounds so unglamorous. No myth-making, no tortured-genius sermon. Just a working musician reminding you that Queen's biggest weapon wasn’t only talent, it was authorship. “We’ve always decided ourselves” is doing the heavy lifting: it frames the band as a self-governing unit in an industry built to outsource taste to labels, radio programmers, and managers. Deacon isn’t romanticizing rebellion; he’s describing a habit.

The phrase “singles and that sort of things” is telling in its casual sprawl. Singles are the commercial choke point, the place where business pressure most aggressively shapes art. By minimizing it linguistically, Deacon shrugs off the very arena where bands often lose power. The subtext: we understood the game, and we didn’t let the game understand us.

Context matters. Queen’s catalog is the case study for why this stance worked: a band willing to release left-field structures, genre-hopping arrangements, and songs that don’t behave like “product” yet still became mass culture. That doesn’t happen by accident; it happens when the people making the music also curate the public-facing story of the music. Deacon’s measured tone also reflects Queen’s internal politics: four strong writers, rotating leads, constant negotiation. “We” signals not just independence from the industry, but a commitment to collective decision-making inside the band.

It’s an anti-diva statement with real bite: the most radical move is choosing your own hits.