What Made Freddie Mercury the Greatest Vocalist in Rock History? The Secrets Revealed in a Short Video Essay

I wasn’t always a Queen fan. Hav­ing cut my music fan teeth on espe­cial­ly down­beat, mis­er­able bands like Joy Divi­sion, The Cure, and The Smiths, I couldn’t quite dig the unabashed sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty and oper­at­ic bom­bast. Like one of the “Kids React to Queen” kids, I found myself ask­ing, “What is this?” What turned me around? Maybe it was the first time I heard Queen’s theme song for Flash Gor­don. The 1980 space opera is most remark­able for Max von Sydow’s turn as Ming the Mer­ci­less, and for those bursts of Fred­die Mer­cury and his mates’ mul­ti-tracked voic­es, explo­sions of syn­co­pat­ed angel song, announc­ing the com­ing of the eight­ies with all the high camp of Rocky Hor­ror and the rock con­fi­dence of Robert Plant.

As a front­man Mer­cury had so much more than the per­fect style and stance—though he did own every stage he set foot on. He had a voice that com­mand­ed atten­tion, even from mopey new wave teenagers vibrat­ing on Ian Curtis’s fre­quen­cy. What makes Mer­cury’s voice so compelling—as most would say, the great­est vocal­ist in all of rock his­to­ry? One recent sci­en­tif­ic study con­clud­ed that Mercury’s phys­i­cal method of singing resem­bled that of Tuvan throat singers.

He was able to cre­ate a faster vibra­to and sev­er­al more lay­ers of har­mon­ics than any­one else. The video above from Poly­phon­ic adds more to the expla­na­tion, quot­ing opera sopra­no Montser­rat Cabal­lé, with whom Mer­cury record­ed an album in 1988. In addi­tion to his incred­i­ble range, Mer­cury “was able to slide effort­less­ly from a reg­is­ter to anoth­er,” she remarked. Though Mer­cury was nat­u­ral­ly a bari­tone, he pri­mar­i­ly sang as a tenor, and had no dif­fi­cul­ty, as we know, with sopra­no parts.

Mer­cury was a great performer—and he was a great per­for­ma­tive vocal­ist, mean­ing, Cabal­lé says, that “he was sell­ing the voice…. His phras­ing was sub­tle, del­i­cate and sweet or ener­getic and slam­ming. He was able to find the right colour or expres­sive nuance for each word.” He had incred­i­ble dis­ci­pline and con­trol over his instru­ment, and an under­rat­ed rhyth­mic sen­si­bil­i­ty, essen­tial for a rock singer to con­vinc­ing­ly take on rock­a­bil­ly, gospel, dis­co, funk, and opera as well as the blues-based hard rock Queen so eas­i­ly mas­tered. No style of music elud­ed him, except per­haps for those that call for a cer­tain kind of vocal­ist who can’t actu­al­ly sing.

That’s the rub with Queen—they were so good at every­thing they did that they can be more than a lit­tle over­whelm­ing. Watch the rest of the video to learn more about how Mercury’s super­hu­man vibra­to pro­duced sounds almost no oth­er human can make; see more of Polyphonic’s music analy­sis of one-of-a-kind musi­cians at our pre­vi­ous posts on Leonard Cohen and David Bowie’s final albums and John Bonham’s drum­ming; and just below, hear all of those Mer­cury qualities—the vibra­to, the per­fect tim­ing, and the expres­sive performativity—in the iso­lat­ed vocal track from “I Want to Break Free” just below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sci­en­tif­ic Study Reveals What Made Fred­die Mercury’s Voice One of a Kind; Hear It in All of Its A Cap­pel­la Splen­dor

Watch Behind-the-Scenes Footage From Fred­die Mercury’s Final Video Per­for­mance

Queen Doc­u­men­tary Pays Trib­ute to the Rock Band That Con­quered the World

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness