Brian May and Roger Taylor of Queen have been awarded the 2025 Polar Music Prize by Sweden’s King Carl Gustaf.
Attending the gala at the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, the rockers were recognised for the entirety of their career.
Speaking on stage, May shared, “In this special moment, I contemplate how that younger Brian May in 1974 would have felt if he knew that we would be living this kind of dream 50 years in the future.”
Taylor added, “When we started our band, we had ambitions, but never dreamed of the journey that was to follow.
“We were fortunate in the fact that our four wildly different personalities came together to achieve a wonderful chemistry.”
Known as the Nobel Prize of Music, the Polar Music Prize is a Swedish international award founded in 1989 by Stig Anderson, best known as the manager of the Swedish band ABBA. It is annually given to one popular musician and one classical musician.
Previous winners of the contemporary award include Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Dizzy Gillespie and Björk.
It is awarded for “significant achievements in music and/or musical activity, or for achievements which are found to be of great potential importance for music or musical activity, and it shall be referable to all fields within or closely connected with music”.
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