Rocktober 12, 2023

Rocktober 12th! 

Today our song is: We Will Rock You by Queen

Wikipedia tells us this about the song:

"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.

The "stomp, stomp, clap" beat throughout "We Will Rock You" was created by the band overdubbing sounds of themselves stamping and clapping many times, and adding delay effects to create a sound that made it seem as if many people were participating.

 

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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.

 

 

Be sure to stop by tomorrow to see what is next on the list! Feel free to join in the fun. The more the merrier, I say!