Queen - Fat Bottomed Girls

What this video is

Released October 1978 as a double A-side single with 'Bicycle Race', 'Fat Bottomed Girls' arrived at the height of Queen's arena-rock commercial ascendancy, coinciding with the Jazz album and its notoriously provocative marketing campaign. The video's straightforward performance format — shot at a live American venue — contrasts sharply with the conceptual ambition Queen would demonstrate in later videos, and…

Why it matters

Representative of the late-1970s arena hard rock promotional film format, before the music video became a distinct art form following MTV's 1981 launch. The video documents Queen at a pivotal commercial moment — the Jazz album era — and illustrates the genre's reliance on live performance…

The director

Denis de Vallance (also credited as Dennis de Vallance) was a British music video and promotional film director active in the late 1970s and early 1980s, working with major rock acts during the formative pre-MTV era of the promotional clip format. He is…