every person can feel freddieâs presence in their souls when they sing MAMAAAAAA UUHHHH, I DONT WANNA DIE, I SOMETIMES I WISH IâVE NEVER BEEN BORN AT ALL with all the air in their lungs iâm not joking
itâs fucking crazy to think about the amount of people who have sung bohemian rhapsody? like itâs 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. itâs a song you scream in the car with your friends while you drive around your boring hometown, itâs a song you drunkenly sing with your arm around your best friend, or a song you sing along to with strangers when itâs on in public. itâs bittersweet to think about freddieâs legacy carrying on like that through his masterpiece. freddie carries on because heâs a part of so many peopleâs good memories and bohemian rhapsody is a huge part of that.
Reblog if you have sung bohemian rhapsody with your friends
every time i see this post iâm reminded of the video of 65,000 people singing bohemian rhapsody in near-perfect harmony
like, what other song can make that claim?
Some of the highlights of that video include:
The crowd cheering after the first stanza when they realize what theyâre all doing
So many people audibly âdoing the guitar partsâ⌠like ya do
The sheer number of voices joining the rediculous falsetto (thanks, Roger)
How they all start jumping at the ramp-up âso you think you can stomp meâ
Hands up, hundreds, thousands deep for the final âoooooâs and the last line to close the song
Only days before my state went into lockdown, âBohemian Rhapsodyâ came on in the restaurant kitchen Iâd 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 âsometimes I wish Iâd never been born at allâ came around, we every single one of us ramped up the intensity and basically made sure Freddie could hear us in the afterlife.
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!
Thereâs 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.)
Something else thatâs rather incredible about this is, Bohemian Rhapsody is a very difficult song from a technical standpoint. Likeâhumor 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. Youâre back? Welcome back. Unless youâre a trained singer, you probably canât do it. There are too many long notes, too many key changes, and too many places whereâif youâre singing all the partsâyouâre just up and down the scale too damned fast. Iâm saying this as a trained singer and I canât do it. I always crack on âmagnificoâ and âleave me to die,â and I have a pretty decent range, but I know I sound ugly as hell on that final coda.
Okay. Now that weâve 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. Youâre all practicing on slightly your own tempo, slightly your own key, even if youâre all working from the same base track. (You can see this in a lot of the Wellerman compilations from Tiktok, where someone always says âSoonâ a moment before everyone else on âsoon may the Wellerman come.â) When you have a chorus comprised of many smaller choruses that are all traveling to be together, this is what dress rehearsal is forâto get all of you onto the same tempo so youâre 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. Youâre 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 groupâthey 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. Theyâre 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 itâs 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 isnât even the band theyâre there to see.
They donât 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?
This was my first ever concert, it's so cool it's so well known aaa
