{"id":819229,"date":"2026-10-31T01:00:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T01:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/819229\/"},"modified":"2026-10-31T01:00:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T01:00:13","slug":"the-singer-freddie-mercury-admitted-he-wished-he-could-sound-like-its-just-effortless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/819229\/","title":{"rendered":"The singer Freddie Mercury admitted he wished he could sound like: \u201cIt\u2019s just effortless\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Freddie<\/p>\n

Credit: Far Out \/ Carol Lee \/ Alamy<\/p>\n

October 30th, 2026 \u00b7 8:05pm GMT <\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to think of someone like Freddie Mercury<\/a> having to struggle to sing every time he got up in the morning. <\/p>\n

Compared to mere mortals who try to put time and effort into making their voice sound like one of the greatest in the world, Mercury seemed to hold the audience in the palm of his hand whilst being an incredible singer, almost as if he was trying to sing opera and run a marathon every time he took the stage. Mercury was always more humble about his gifts, and he contested that everything he looked for in a singer came from Aretha Franklin.<\/p>\n

As opposed to Queen\u2019s operatic form of singing, comparing Mercury to Franklin is like comparing apples and industrial-sized tanks. Mercury was certainly excellent at what he did, but Franklin\u2019s voice had a power that didn\u2019t seem human. Whenever she sang a song like \u2018You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman\u2019<\/a>, you believed every word because of just how hard she could belt it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not like Mercury couldn\u2019t belt when he wanted to. His entire career was indebted to the power of his higher register, but the power he had in most ranges was amazing, hitting those kinds of guttural lows as well as reaching into the stratosphere like on the final breakdown of \u2018Under Pressure\u2019.<\/p>\n

Although Mercury could do a lot of things with his voice, nowhere was Franklin more evident in his style than on \u2018Somebody to Love\u2019. The entire premise of the piece was to create a gospel-style opening and pair it with a great pop song, so hearing Franklin do those insane melismatic slides down gospel scales feels like he\u2019s in a hot church building instead of a proper English recording studio.<\/p>\n

\"Freddie<\/a>Credit: Far Out \/ Elektra Records<\/p>\n

That influence went beyond the lead vocal, too. Queen built up layers of voices to create the feeling of a gospel choir, with Brian May recalling that Mercury arrived with plenty of those parts already worked out. For all the apparent abandon in his singing, there was a fairly meticulous musical mind keeping everything together. <\/p>\n

The backing voices could answer him, challenge him, or make his loneliness sound even more desperate by surrounding it with this enormous wall of sound. It also explains why \u2018Somebody to Love\u2019 never feels like Mercury simply showing off his range. There\u2019s a conversation happening around him, even when he sounds completely alone.<\/p>\n

Further reading: From The Vault<\/p>\n

Despite Mercury\u2019s ability to channel his music into different styles, he admitted that he was jealous of Franklin\u2019s contribution, saying<\/a>, \u201cAretha Franklin\u2019s phrasing is just wonderful. I wish I could sing like her. It\u2019s just so effortless. She just sings like a dream; she doesn\u2019t really have to think about it\u2026I can tell just by listening to her records that she goes in there, and it\u2019s just effortless.\u201d<\/p>\n

While, yes, it\u2019s easy to see the effort that Mercury puts into his phrasing compared to Franklin, his greatest strength is never being tied down to any one genre. Franklin has still yet to be topped in terms of raw power when she was singing any genre, but Mercury was about taking his music wherever he fancied, depending on what the song needed.<\/p>\n

Songs like \u2018You\u2019re My Best Friend\u2019 might be pure pop balladry, but his ability to go from that to blistering hard rock on \u2018Fat Bottomed Girls\u2019, operatic sections on \u2018Bohemian Rhapsody\u2019, and even the odd show tune mixed in like \u2018Lazing On a Sunday Afternoon\u2019 is the work of a mad genius putting his voice through the wringer just to see what works for him. <\/p>\n

Mercury could have shown most aspiring singers a thing or two about how to use one\u2019s voice as an instrument, but in terms of pure precision, Franklin was the equivalent of a vocal hurricane.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Far Out \/ Carol Lee \/ Alamy October 30th, 2026 \u00b7 8:05pm GMT It\u2019s hard to think…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":819230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[85104,6491,96,1004,1006,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-819229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-aretha-franklin","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-freddie-mercury","tag-queen","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=819229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/819230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}