Queens

Idles' Meat EP was a departure from their original post-punk music. This was the song where the band found their pub rock and punk-oriented sound. "Sonically, it completely changed," vocalist Joe Talbot told Mojo magazine. "I remember a performance at the Croft, in Stokes Croft in Bristol. We all clicked on the song 'Queens.' It was a moment where I felt, this is what we're supposed to do. I wanted to sound like Otis Redding, singers that are naturally stunning, and it nice to want to be Otis Redding but I'm not that. I grew up on hip-hop, and I speak the language of violence, artistically. It gets me going."

The song pivots around a seething refrain: "Stop taking photos of yourself." This is the sound of selfish millennials being throttled. Talbot explained in 2019 the song "is talking about exactly the same thing as I do now - the personal and the political and how the two will never cease to batter each other."