Crazy Little Thing Called Love The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke
Fender Telecaster Electric Guitar
1: "I was thinking about football when I wrote it. I wanted a participation song, something the fans could latch on to. It was aimed at the masses; I thought we'd see how they took it. It worked a treat. When we performed it at a private concert in London, the fans actually broke into a football chant between numbers. Of course, I've given it more theatrical subtlety than an ordinary football chant" - Freddie Mercury (Circus magazine, January 1978). 2: Rhythm magazine, September 2002. |
Believe it or not, this is one of the most underrated songs in the Queen catalogue. Sure, everybody knows it, most of us have shouted its chorus from the top off our lungs at the end of a football championship (I don't know why, but stadia speakers make this one diamond!), yet very few are actually aware of the hidden gems inside. How many of us could hum or whistle its marvellous orchestral bass-line, or the crazy (yet clever and beautiful) harmony vocal parts at the modulation? This short piece is like one of those films where you can discover new secrets every time you watch it carefully. Same case here: listen to a karaoke version with headphones and check out the piano part only, it's so simple, but at the same time so creative! Or try focusing on the guitar parts only, or the bombastic drums, or anything... Music
& Lyrics by: Freddie Mercury Produced
by: Queen Recorded:
Between July and September 1977 Main
Keys: Cm/Eb, Bb, F Acoustic
Drums: Roger Taylor Lead
Vocals: Freddie Mercury According to Freddie, he'd got the song ready by the 'A Night at the Opera' sessions, but saved it for later. The reasons are undisclosed, but an educated guess could be that Champions wouldn't fit in well with the rest of the album material. Yet, the year is important to establish some timelines: in 1974 Fred had written a verse-chorus-verse-chorus... anthem with non-binary metre. In 1976 he'd come up with Somebody to Love (in 6/8), so we can see that We Are the Champions is the missing link between those two. The structure is an evolution from Lap ... Revisited, and the harmony's slightly more complex too. The ending is abrupt in both cases. Several songs have been written about the "it was hard, but I finally did it" theme. On an interview for Circus magazine in early 1978, Mercury described it as his version of I Did It My Way. Many years later, KISS did a marvellous tune on the same vein called Raise Your Glasses (which btw includes the line "standing proud cause we're the champions").
It's recorded by the usual Queen formula: drums, bass, Freddie on piano and Brian's rhythm and lead guitars. Although Freddie wrote it for football, he didn't go the easy way of doing a hooligan-esque sing-along section with only drums or handclaps; he wanted more sophistication instead (1). About the way drums are arranged, virtuoso player Taylor Hawkins summed it up "This is one of my favourite drum tracks of Roger's - the fill that he does before the chorus is so interesting. Never in a million years would I have thought of doing some of the stuff he did! It's his feel in this too - he is so good at that 6/8 swing and making things feel good" (2). The bass-line is one of the most melodic and orchestral found in the Queen catalogue, and is independent from Freddie's left-hand. The piano-part is relatively simple, yet with some nice rhythmic tricks applied (and a brill chromatic progression before the chorus). There are two main guitars, often going into an interesting question-answer game with each other. And of course there are backing vocals, performed exclusively by Freddie, there must be about a dozen of layers (three for each harmony-part). Range covered is one octave and a perfect fourth.
This whole section lasts 15 measures (17 if we count the "on and on and on" lift as part of the verse), using the form AAAABBC (D). Note the use of pedal bass except for the last phrase, which by the way has the same chord functions as the Bohemian Rhapsody intro. Another Freddie trademark is the three-bar phrase (Bohemian Rhapsody, The Miracle).
Freddie put a I>II modulation using a very similar formula to what he'd done in Bohemian Rhapsody: pivoting through chromatic chords. Actually, in Bo Rhap the key-change is from Eb to F as well. The chords are formed by an ascending line on right-hand piano while left-hand maintains the Bb root except for the last bar, where it's C. Ab/Bb had appeared in Bohemian Rhapsody as well, and years later Fred would use similar dissonances in It's a Hard Life and The Miracle. Half-diminished chords can be found on Made in Heaven, Princes of the Universe, The March of the Black Queen, You Take My Breath Away and, of course, Bohemian Rhapsody. It's interesting how backing vocals are arranged in that bit: the top line sings "on and on and on and on", being all the "on" words done with a tenor C, and all the "and" words with the Bb below it. The rest of harmonies double right-hand piano (the Ab-Ab-Ab-Bb part is done in octaves):
As you can see, it's an interesting choral part. Not too complex, but not amateurish at all. Let's see the linear graphic:
The end of this section cleverly modulates to 'v' (see Great King Rat for the same incident), although it's quite abrupt, leaving the audience with some sort of "what on earth?" ... which is a rather nice psychological trick to make the public desire more. A case where the same thing happens is In the Lap of the Gods (the non-revisited one), exactly in the same key. Some more comments: - The intro to Axl Rose's November Rain uses the same chords as the 1st phrase here, but without Bb and in a different key. - The 'biidim' chord appears in other songs by Freddie: Love of My Life and How Can I Go On, for instance. - Likewise, there are 'ivdim' functions in Made in Heaven, Barcelona and Bohemian Rhapsody.
It's a six-bar section changing from Fm to Bb6, then from Fm to C7sus4, then from Fm to Gm/C. All those chords are diatonic, reinforcing the Cm key for the next verse.
Although not a big football fan, Freddie ended up writing an anthem for it. By the time Champions was written England was going through a hard time when it comes to international tournaments: they hadn't been able to qualify to the 1974 World Cup and they wouldn't be in the Euro '76 or Argentina '78. Even if Kevin Keegan demonstrated his geniality through club games, he failed to shine as he deserved to when playing for the national team. The 70s weren't good for English football, yet they were wonderful for English music. On 4th July 1990 England lost in semi-finals against West Germany by penalties. That was the closest they could get to win the World Cup after 24 years. It's a shame that Fred couldn't be alive to watch his country celebrate the first place with We Are the Champions. Yet, sure enough, many others have, as the song's become an anthem. |
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