Karen O and Willie Nelson Cover Under Pressure

Under Pressure, the classic tune from David Bowie and Queen, seems like one of those songs you don’t want to mess with — we’re looking at you here, Vanilla Ice. But if someone is going to cover it, it might as well be Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Willie Nelson.

(via open culture)

• David Bowie
• Karen O
• music
• Queen
• remix
• video
• Willie Nelson

Freddie Mercury’s Vocal Doppelganger

Whatever your opinion of the Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody,¹ you gotta admit the music was pretty great. After all, Mercury and Queen were pretty great. But some of the credit also goes to Marc Martel, who sounds remarkably like Mercury and did some of the vocals for the film.

Rami Malek embodies Mercury onscreen, but as he told The New York Times last year, “No one wants to hear me sing.” During the performance sequences in “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the movie sometimes employs Mercury’s actual vocals from the Queen archives, but that wasn’t always practical — some scenes demanded a stunt vocal-cord performer.

The film’s creators have conceded that the sung vocals in the movie are largely by Mercury and Martel, although they haven’t broken down the specifics of who contributed what; doing so might distract from Malek’s performance.

Here’s Martel singing We Are The Champions:

He even looks a little bit like Mercury, don’t you think? Perhaps more impressively, here’s Martel doing Bohemian Rhapsody:

Vocal coach Carl Franz was impressed.

Martel is currently touring with a Queen cover band and released an album of Queen covers last year.

Bonus: Polyphonic explains why Mercury was such an incredible singer:

(via open culture)

1. My 2 cents is that Rami Malik deserved the hell out of that Oscar and BH was really fun to see in the midst of a sea of Queen fans on opening night. But a Best Picture nominee it was not.↩

• Bohemian Rhapsody
• Freddie Mercury
• Marc Martel
• movies
• music
• Queen
• video