Somebody To Love is an integral part of the rock music world. The British rock band Queen released the song on an album in 1976. A Day At The Races and in 1981 appeared in Greatest Hitswhich topped the UK’s best-selling album list.

Aretha Franklin

The song is Freddie Mercury’s masterpiece: a bombastic singer who delivered his lyrics with great feeling. If we look at the other side of the musical spectrum, we find Aretha Franklin: a singer who always stood behind the microphone with incredible power and emotion and a woman whom Mercury greatly admired. When he wrote the lyrics to Somebody To Love, he had Franklin in mind – he wanted nothing more for this song than to recreate the gospel feeling that she so admired. And it worked: the song has the signature opera-rock sound of Queen, with a sprinkling of gospel sauce on top. Road crew chief Peter Hince gave an interview with Greatest Hits Radio that Mercury even considered Somebody To Love superior to Bohemian Rhapsody: “He thought it was better purely lyrically.” Rumor has it that it was his favorite Queen song.

In the song’s video we see Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon standing together around a microphone for the gospel portion of the song. But in reality, only the first three lend their voices to singing. Deacon did not consider himself a great singer. “Aesthetically, you have to have all four around a microphone, but John doesn’t sing on his recordings. By his own admission, he doesn’t have a voice. He does sing on stage, but the crew always keeps the microphone volume very low,” Hince explained. off active Mojo Magazine.

Slippery

“With a crew, there are songs you like and songs you don’t like,” Hince said. Mojo about the crew’s favorite song while they were on tour. He points out that it was always one of their favorites. “The studio version is really slick, but on stage there’s a lot more grit to it.” We saw the latter when the guys were in Montreal in 1981. The live album would be recorded over two concerts in the Canadian city Montreal Rock Queen. Somebody To Love is of course also on the set list. The guys are on top form: not a single note is missing and not a single line is not pristine. And John Deacon’s voice? Nowhere to be seen.

Watch the performance below!