Brian May is not a fan of the Brit Awards going gender-neutral.
Earlier this week, the awards show announced that it's scrapping male and female categories to make the annual ceremony as "inclusive and relevant as possible".
From 2022, there will be awards for Artist of the Year and International Artist of the Year, instead of Best Male and Best Female Solo Artist and Best International Male and Female Solo Artist, The Telegraph reports.
Dua Lipa and J Hus - who scooped up awards earlier this year - will be the last winners of the gendered awards.
However, the news seems to have angered some, including Queen's co-founder and rock legend May, who labeled the decision as "frightening".
Speaking to The Mirror at ITV’s Palooza event in London this week, May criticized the move, saying: "It's a decision that has been made without enough thought. A lot of things work quite well and can be left alone."
"I get so sick of people trying to change things without thinking of the long-term consequences. Some of these things are an improvement, some of them are not," he added.
The Queen guitarist went on to say he believes there is an "atmosphere of fear everywhere because people are afraid to say how they really think," adding: "I think so many people are feeling, 'Hang on, this isn't quite right.' But they don’t dare say anything. Eventually, there will be some kind of explosion."
Elsewhere in the interview, May referenced his Queen bandmate Freddie Mercury, saying he believes the singer would have found the culture he speaks of "difficult".
"For instance, Freddie came from Zanzibar, he wasn’t British, he wasn’t white as such – nobody cares, nobody ever, ever discussed it," May said.
"He was a musician, he was our friend, he was our brother. We didn’t have to stop and think: 'Ooh, now, should we work with him? Is he the right color? Is he the right sexual proclivity?' None of that happened, and now I find it frightening that you have to be so calculating about everything."
May added that he believes that Queen would not have been considered diverse enough nowadays to win their four BRIT Awards, adding: "We would be forced to have people of different colors and different sexes and we would have to have a trans [person]. You know life doesn’t have to be like that. We can be separate and different."
