We Will Rock You facts for kids
Quick facts for kids "We Will Rock You" |
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One of the French single picture sleeves
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| Single by Queen | ||||
| from the album News of the World | ||||
| A-side | "We Are the Champions" | |||
| Released | 7 October 1977 | |||
| Genre | Arena rock | |||
| Length | 2:02 | |||
| Label | ||||
| Songwriter(s) | Brian May | |||
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| Queen singles chronology | ||||
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"We Will Rock You" is a song written by Brian May and recorded by British rock band Queen for their 1977 album News of the World. Rolling Stone ranked it number 330 of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time" in 2004, and it placed at number 146 on the Songs of the Century list in 2001. In 2009, "We Will Rock You" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Other than the last 30 seconds, which contains a guitar solo by May, the song is generally set in a cappella form, using only stomping and clapping as a rhythmic body percussion beat. In 1977, "We Will Rock You" and "We Are the Champions" were issued together as a worldwide top 10 single. Soon after the album was released, many radio stations played the songs consecutively, without interruption.
Since its release, "We Will Rock You" has been covered, remixed, sampled, parodied, referred to, and used by multiple recording artists, TV shows, films and other media worldwide. It has also become a popular stadium anthem at sports events around the world, due mostly to its simple rhythm. On 7 October 2017, Queen released a Raw Sessions version of the track to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the release of News of the World. It features a radically different approach to the guitar solo and includes May's count-in immediately prior to the recording.
Contents
Music
"We Will Rock You" and "We Are the Champions" were written in response to an event that occurred during the A Day at the Races Tour. The band played at Stafford's Bingley Hall, and, according to Brian May:
We did an encore and then went off, and instead of just keeping clapping, they sang "You'll Never Walk Alone" to us, and we were just completely knocked out and taken aback – it was quite an emotional experience really, and I think these chant things are in some way connected with that.
One version was used as the opening track on 1977's News of the World. This consists of a stomp-stomp-clap-pause beat, and a power chorus, being somewhat of an anthem. The stamping effects were created by the band overdubbing the sounds of themselves stomping and clapping many times and adding delay effects to make it sound like many people were participating. The durations of the delays were in the ratios of prime numbers, a technique now known as non-harmonic reverberation. A tape loop is used to repeat the last phrase of the guitar solo three times as opposed to Brian May playing it three separate times on the recording. The "stomp, stomp, clap" sounds were later used in the Queen + Paul Rodgers song "Still Burnin'".
When performed live, the song is usually followed by "We Are the Champions", as they were designed to run together. The songs are often paired on the radio and at sporting events, where they are frequently played. They were the last two songs Queen performed at Live Aid in 1985.
Queen also performed an alternative version of "We Will Rock You" known as the "fast version", featuring a faster-feeling tempo and a full band arrangement. The band would frequently use this version to open their live sets in the late 1970s and early 1980s. A studio recording of this version is also known to exist, recorded for John Peel's show on BBC Radio 1 in 1977.
Music video
The music video for "We Will Rock You" was filmed in 1977 at the back garden of Roger Taylor's mansion. It sees the band lip synching the song, hand clapping with gloves and foot stomping on a frozen ground. In an interview with Billboard, Taylor spoke on filming the video:
We shot it on the grounds of a country house I'd just bought in Surrey and we hadn't completed the sale, so we weren't allowed in the house. We figured, 'we might as well shoot it here.' It was absolutely freezing cold and we did three takes.
Personnel
Information is based on the album's Liner Notes
- Freddie Mercury – lead and backing vocals, hand claps, foot stamping
- Brian May – electric guitar, backing vocals, hand claps, foot stamping
- Roger Taylor – backing vocals, hand claps, foot stamping
- John Deacon – hand claps, foot stamping
See also
In Spanish: We Will Rock You para niños
