{"id":37315,"date":"2025-11-12T17:42:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T17:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/37315\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T17:42:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T17:42:10","slug":"on-this-day-in-1976-queen-released-an-iconic-freddie-mercury-penned-track-heavily-inspired-by-aretha-franklin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/37315\/","title":{"rendered":"On This Day in 1976, Queen Released an Iconic Freddie Mercury-Penned Track Heavily Inspired by Aretha Franklin"},"content":{"rendered":"

As one of the greatest rock vocalists of all time, it\u2019s almost laughable to imagine Queen frontman Freddie Mercury<\/a> wishing he could sound like somebody else\u2014yet, as the rest of the world was admiring him and his band, he was admiring Aretha Franklin, the \u201cQueen of Soul.\u201d Mercury spoke incredibly highly of the iconic soul singer, including one interview in February 1984<\/a> where he lamented, \u201cI wish I could sing like her.\u201d (Leaving us to wonder: didn\u2019t he, though?)<\/p>\n

Mercury continued, \u201cHer phrasing is just so beautiful. I mean, it\u2019s so effortless. She just sings like a dream. It\u2019s like she doesn\u2019t have to think about it. When I have to sing, I think about it. I sort of practice a few phrases and then do it. Whereas I can tell by just listening to Aretha Franklin\u2019s records that, I mean, she just goes in there and just\u2026it\u2019s effortless. Having said that, I\u2019m sure she\u2019d call me up and say, \u2018Wait a minute.\u2019 But it just sounds so effortless, and it\u2019s all sort of spontaneous phrasing and things, which is what I love.\u201d<\/p>\n

In many ways, comparing Mercury to Franklin is the classic conundrum of comparing apples to oranges. But on November 12, 1976, Queen and Aretha Franklin were as similar as they ever were, thanks to a song Mercury wrote with Franklin in mind.<\/p>\n

Aretha Franklin Heavily Inspired This 1976 Queen Classic<\/p>\n

British rock band Queen released \u201cSomebody to Love\u201d<\/a> on November 12, 1976, as the lead single from their fifth studio album, A Day at the Races. (The album came out one month later, on December 10.) In terms of classic Queen songs, it\u2019s one of the most recognizable tracks on the album to the casual Queen listener. And according to both Mercury and his bandmate, drummer Roger Taylor, it was a song heavily inspired by the Queen of Soul herself, Aretha Franklin.<\/p>\n

\u201cFreddie\u2019s very much into that,\u201d Taylor said of the \u201cAretha Franklin-influenced\u201d track during a 1977 interview<\/a> with Circus Magazine. \u201cWe tried to keep the track in a loose, gospel-type feel. I think it\u2019s the loosest track we\u2019ve ever done.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his February 1984 interview, Mercury compared \u201cSomebody to Love\u201d to Franklin\u2019s gospel records, which he studied voraciously. He compared her backing choir to \u201ctidal waves\u201d of sound, which he successfully emulated on his own song. The arrangements might be loose in \u201cSomebody to Love\u201d, but only by Queen\u2019s airtight standards. Whether in the lazily swung verses where Mercury sings, \u201cGot no feel, I got no rhythm, I just keep losing my beat,\u201d to the building, chorus-filled outro, the song is a masterclass in both vocal expression and arrangement as a whole.<\/p>\n

The greatest shame, in this writer\u2019s humble opinion, is that we were never graced with an Aretha Franklin version of the Queen classic.<\/p>\n

Photo by PA Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As one of the greatest rock vocalists of all time, it\u2019s almost laughable to imagine Queen frontman Freddie…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[21728,21729,9,24,63,666,122,124,123,1572],"class_list":["post-37315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-1970s","tag-aretha-franklin","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queen","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-rock-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}