We Will Rock You
"We Will Rock You" is a song by the British rock band Queen for their 1977 album News of the World, written by guitarist Brian May.[3] Rolling Stone ranked it number 330 of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time" in 2004,[4] 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.[5][6]
This article is about the Queen song. For other uses, see We Will Rock You (disambiguation)."We Will Rock You"
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.[7] Soon after the album was released, many radio stations played the songs consecutively, without interruption.[8]
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.[9][10] It has also become a popular stadium anthem at sports events around the world, due mostly to its simple rhythm.[11][12] 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.[13]
We Will Rock You - fast version[edit]
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, as heard on the albums Live Killers (1979), Queen on Fire - Live at the Bowl (2004), Queen Rock Montreal (2007), and the expanded edition of News of the World (2011).
A studio version was made for John Peel's BBC Radio 1 show at the Maida Vale Studios on 28 October 1977 and first broadcast soon after on 14 November. It includes a separate section that begins with an abridged session version of the original comprising the first verse, chorus and guitar outro - this part has become known as We Will Rock You (slow). Between the two parts there is a brief reading of Hermann Hesse's novel Siddhartha, used in a BBC Radio documentary. This audio was found on the BBC tapes being reused to record the session and was retained by the band.
This full BBC session version of We Will Rock You was broadcast on Alan Freeman's Final Saturday Rock Show on Radio 1 on 26 August 1978, has also been played on Radio 1's The Friday Rock Show and more recently on Johnie Walker's Sounds Of The Seventies and Vernon Kay's weekday morning show, both on BBC Radio 2.
The fast version is also used as the curtain call music for the musical of the same title, after the finale, which is a pairing of the original "We Will Rock You" and "We Are the Champions". In 2002, the fast version was officially released on a promo single distributed by the tabloid The Sun, and can also be found on The Best of King Biscuit Live Volume 4, and In The Mirror - The Lost BBC Sessions.
Information is based on the album's Liner Notes[24]
"We Will Rock You"
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