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?
