# After More Than Four Decades, Brian May Still Feels a Surge of Power Every Time “We Are the Champions” Begins
**LONDON — He has played it thousands of times. In stadiums across every continent. Through bandmates lost and new voices found. Yet when the opening chords of “We Are the Champions” begin, Brian May still feels it — a surge of power that hasn’t faded in forty years.**
Among all the anthems in Queen’s catalog, this one remains untouchable. But why? What keeps a song played to exhaustion still feeling unstoppable after all these decades?
May’s answer might surprise you.
“It’s not about us,” he says simply. Most assume the song’s endurance comes from its triumphant melody, its stadium-shaking chorus, its place in sports arenas worldwide. And yes, those things matter. But for May, the power lives somewhere else entirely.
“When that song starts, I don’t hear Queen. I hear them. The crowd. The song belongs to them now — it always did. We just wrote it down.”
May describes a peculiar shift that happens every night. The band begins the familiar piano intro. The crowd recognizes it instantly. And in that split second, ownership transfers.
“Freddie understood this completely. He would stand at the edge of the stage and just let them sing. He knew it wasn’t about him anymore. It was about what the song had become — a voice for everyone who needed to feel like a champion, just for one night.”
That’s why it never fades. Not because of the notes. Because of what happens in the space between them. Thousands of voices rising together, declaring something they might not feel anywhere else.
“We Are the Champions” endures because it was never really Queen’s song. It was always theirs.
