In the amazingly theatrical “Crazy Little Thing” video, Mercury dances with both men and women, and he also adapts a sort of leather-daddy persona, straddling a motorcycle and spinning around what sure looks like a stripper pole. Someone who knows more about queer theory than me might have a whole lot to say about the levels of drag that Mercury tries on in “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” Mercury wasn’t openly gay when the band recorded “Crazy Little Thing,” though it doesn’t seem like he was trying particularly hard to hide it, either. It’s a gimmick, a nostalgic nod toward a star who’d died a couple of years earlier. The whole song, from its handclaps to its schticky backup vocals, is ’50s rockabilly reimagined for turn-of-the-’80s arena crowds. Even when the band breaks the beat, as on Roger Taylor’s little snare-tap break, it’s a silly bit of quasi-jazz showmanship. Brian May knocks out a guitar solo that starts as rockabilly shredding before exploding into pyrotechnics. John Deacon plays an old-timey walking bassline. Mercury sings much of the song in a lower-register growl that practically qualifies as an imitation, though he still jumps up into his crowd-pleasing yelps whenever the feeling hits him. Really, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” is a Broadway-style Elvis tribute just as consciously campy as anything that John Travolta did on the Grease soundtrack. 1 Hits, Mercury later said that “Crazy Little Thing” is “not typical of my work, but that’s because nothing is typical of my work.” On the single, Mercury played rhythm guitar, something he’d never done on record before. But working within the boundaries of his own acoustic-guitar abilities, he came up with a relatively modest throwback shuffle of a song. Simplicity wasn’t really Mercury’s thing he tended toward extravagant multi-part fantasias.
Crazy little thing called love who wrote it how to#
Mercury worked the song out on guitar, which he barely knew how to play. He later claimed that it took him between five and 10 minutes. Mercury wrote “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” while taking a bubble bath at the Hilton in Munich, where Queen were recording the 1980 album The Game. So Queen were a category unto themselves - flamboyantly huge rock travelers who didn’t like any genre enough to commit to it for too long. But Freddie Mercury had a whole lot more personality than the Steve Perrys and Brad Delps of the world, and the band had more ambition. Commercially, Queen could’ve been considered peers of some of the big American rock bands of the era, the Journeys and Bostons. They sold a lot of albums - 1975’s A Night At The Opera went triple-platinum - and they toured arenas. (It’s a 7.) Their singles often landed in the top 40, but they weren’t really a singles act. It’s a 9.)īefore “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” Queen only had two top-10 US hits: “Bohemian Rhapsody” and 1977’s “ We Are The Champions,” which peaked at #4. (In 1992, “Bohemian Rhapsody” returned to the US charts thanks to its appearance in Wayne’s World, where it peaked at #2. In the US, “Bohemian Rhapsody” was Queen’s first top-10 hit, peaking at #9. 1975’s beautifully overblown “ Bohemian Rhapsody” became one of the biggest hits of all time in the UK, where it reigned at #1 for nine weeks. As the band became more adventurous, they also got bigger. One of those early successes, 1974’s “Killer Queen,” also did well in the US, peaking at #12. Queen released their self-titled debut in 1972 and started scoring UK hits a couple years later. This was this guy’s career move.) Mercury joined Smile, changed their name to Queen, and designed their new logo.
Smile were about to break up in 1970, when the original singer left to join a band called Humpy Bong. He’d then worked as a clerk in second-hand stores and as a baggage handler at Heathrow. Mercury, born Farrokh Bulsara in Zanzibar, had settled in London as a teenager and studied art in college.
The band had formed in London in 1970, when a student group called Smile adopted their biggest fan, Mercury, as their new frontman. By the time Queen landed that first #1 with “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” they’d been stars on both sides of the Atlantic for years.
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