good old fashioned lover boy @captiancorduroy - Tumblr Blog

every person can feel freddie’s presence in their souls when they sing MAMAAAAAA UUHHHH, I DONT WANNA DIE, I SOMETIMES I WISH I’VE NEVER BEEN BORN AT ALL with all the air in their lungs i’m not joking

peachdisco

it’s fucking crazy to think about the amount of people who have sung bohemian rhapsody? like it’s such a unifying song, by nature of the fact that so many people know it. it holds so many good memories for me and other people. it’s a song you scream in the car with your friends while you drive around your boring hometown, it’s a song you drunkenly sing with your arm around your best friend, or a song you sing along to with strangers when it’s on in public. it’s bittersweet to think about freddie’s legacy carrying on like that through his masterpiece. freddie carries on because he’s a part of so many people’s good memories and bohemian rhapsody is a huge part of that.

deathbutwithfuzzyanimals

Reblog if you have sung bohemian rhapsody with your friends

reikah-deactivated20190906

every time i see this post i’m reminded of the video of 65,000 people singing bohemian rhapsody in near-perfect harmony

like, what other song can make that claim?

crewdlydrawn-deactivated2022072

Some of the highlights of that video include:

The crowd cheering after the first stanza when they realize what they’re all doing

So many people audibly ‘doing the guitar parts’… like ya do

The sheer number of voices joining the rediculous falsetto (thanks, Roger)

How they all start jumping at the ramp-up “so you think you can stomp me”

Hands up, hundreds, thousands deep for the final “ooooo”s and the last line to close the song

aces-to-apples

Only days before my state went into lockdown, “Bohemian Rhapsody” came on in the restaurant kitchen I’d just been hired at and, no shit, every single worker in that little diner started singing along. Me (the only queer afaik), the manager, all the other kitchen workers, the dishwasher up front, the two people on the counter, all but two of the men over 30. Just belting out Freddie Mercury at the top of their lungs. And you can bet when “sometimes I wish I’d never been born at all” came around, we every single one of us ramped up the intensity and basically made sure Freddie could hear us in the afterlife.

zohbugg

solitarelee

iamthespineofmybook

One of the things that struck me, listening to the video, is that you cannot distinguish the original vocals from the crowd, and sometimes you can barely hear the music. And the POV is on the stage the speakers are playing the song from!

There’s good reason why, nearly fifty years after the height of their career, Queen is still considered one of the best bands of all time ever.

(And how albums left lying about in cars will eventually metamorphose into Best of Queen albums.)

prismatic-bell

Something else that’s rather incredible about this is, Bohemian Rhapsody is a very difficult song from a technical standpoint. Like–humor me, okay, go flip it on and try to sing the whole thing at the top of your voice without falling off-key, out of breath, or cracking at least once. Then come back.

Okay. You’re back? Welcome back. Unless you’re a trained singer, you probably can’t do it. There are too many long notes, too many key changes, and too many places where–if you’re singing all the parts–you’re just up and down the scale too damned fast. I’m saying this as a trained singer and I can’t do it. I always crack on “magnifico” and “leave me to die,” and I have a pretty decent range, but I know I sound ugly as hell on that final coda.

Okay. Now that we’ve established that, I want to talk a little about singing as a chorus. One of the things a lot of people learned during the pandemic is how hard it is to take twenty people, all in different places, and stitch them together to make a single coherent song with perfect pitch and timing. You’re all practicing on slightly your own tempo, slightly your own key, even if you’re all working from the same base track. (You can see this in a lot of the Wellerman compilations from Tiktok, where someone always says “Soon” a moment before everyone else on “soon may the Wellerman come.”) When you have a chorus comprised of many smaller choruses that are all traveling to be together, this is what dress rehearsal is for–to get all of you onto the same tempo so you’re starting and finishing at exactly the same time. This is a thing that normally only happens after at least several days of practice, and it is an important skill that must be taught. You’re not just born knowing how to do this.

I do not know how many people at that Green Day concert were trained singers. But I do know there is no way in hell all few thousand of them were a single group–they showed up a few at a time, maybe even flying solo for the night. Now go and listen to the video again. Listen to the ends of verses and the pickups. They’re fucking crisp as hell. Everyone is starting and ending at the same place. Not even a single note off. (And yes, you can hear when it’s a single note off, even in a crowd that big. A handful of people would be enough to throw it off.) And while a few in the crowd may be off-key, so many more are on-key that the cumulative effect is of the song being on-key. This isn’t even the band they’re there to see.

They don’t just know this song, this technically-difficult song, this long and complex song by a completely different band. They know it perfectly. They know it down to the fucking note. They know it so well that they did it in perfect synchrony, without a single chance to practice.

Do you know how insane that is?

parallelpenguins

This is why I say Bohemian Rhapsody is the best song ever written. Not because it’s hard or anything like that, but because it feels like no other song when you’re in a group that spontaneously starts singing along to it. People spontaneously sing along to other songs, but for some reason this one just grabs everyone by their soul and shakes them as they sing it. Queen is amazing. Freddy Mercury was a legend. This is the best song any one has ever made.

maghrabiyya

As a child when I moved to Spain I was surprised to discover that my classmates who did not speak a word of English knew how to sing Bohemian rhapsody perfectly. As well as We Will Rock You

Queen know no boundaries, nothing, not time, not language, not distance can stand in the way of the unifying nature of their music

maelwife

snl Elton John Johnny Cash outfit swap reminder

getagriponmyboyracerrollbar

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

arsonistblue

rip freddie mercury you would’ve loved the new lil nas x video

phoneybeatlemania-bit-the-dust

Paul McCartney after July 6th 1957

terror-triplet

Tommy Lee in his early 20's

[Photos by Elaine Adams Denning]

thebeatlelove

johns-diqi

Beautiful pictures that I thought y’all deserved to see

thebeatlelove

Paul is doing his best model face here

garden-lodge

i’m bringing back spud

garden-lodge

spud

sgt-paul

Paul on the set of PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES.

Rønning: Paul McCartney was a dream to work with. He knew all his lines, he was funny – Sandberg: Very used to cameras. Rønning: Yeah, I mean it was such a sacred moment almost, playing with him. […] It’s just part of this adventure for us as filmmakers and you know, Jack Sparrow’s family tree is pretty cool, having Keith Richards as his dad, and Paul McCartney as his uncle…