About the song... We Will Rock You is a song written by Brian May and recorded and performed by 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 the RIAA placed it at number 146 on its list of Songs of the Century. In 2009, We Will Rock You was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Other than the last 30 seconds containing a guitar solo by May, the song is generally set in a cappella form, using only stomping and clapping as a rhythmic beat. In 1977, We Will Rock You and We Are the Champions were issued together as a worldwide top ten single. Soon after the album was released, many radio stations began playing the songs back to back without interruption. Since its release, We Will Rock You has been covered, remixed, sampled, parodied, referenced and used by multiple recording artists, TV shows, films and other media worldwide. This song and its well-known partner We Are the Champions were written in response to an event occurring in the 1977 British Tour. The band had played a gig at Staffords Bingley Hall, and, says Brian May: We did an encore and then went off, and instead of just keeping clapping, they sang Youll 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 their 1977 album News of the World. This version 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 create a 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. When performed live, this version is usually followed by We Are the Champions, another of the albums hits, 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. The songs are also paired back to back on the album, and they are still played together to this day on American classic rock radio stations.
Posted on: Fri, 18 Oct 2013 10:33:46 +0000
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