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\"We Will Rock You\" is a song by the British rock band Queen from their 1977 album News of the World, written by guitarist Brian May. Rolling Stone ranked it number 330 of \"The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time\" in 2004, and the RIAA 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.

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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.\n

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, mostly due 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.\n

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Music

\"We Will Rock You\" was 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:\n

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.\n

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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 on the Wessex Studios drum riser and clapping many times, then adding delay effects to make it sound like many people were participating. The delay durations were in the ratios of prime numbers, a technique now known as non-harmonic reverberation. The guitar solo on the recording ends with a phrase repeated three times; this is a tape loop, rather than Brian May playing the phrase multiple times.\n

The \"stomp, stomp, clap\" sounds were later used in the Queen + Paul Rodgers song \"Still Burnin'\".\n

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.\n

Fast version

Studio version

Queen also arranged an alternative version of \"We Will Rock You\" known as the \"fast version\", featuring a faster-feeling tempo and a full band arrangement. The 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, taken from a BBC Radio documentary. This audio was found on the BBC tapes being reused to record the session and was retained by the band.\n

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 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.\n

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.\n

Live version

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Queen performed this alternate version of \"We Will Rock You\" frequently at concerts spanning from the News of the World Tour in 1977 until the Hot Space Tour in 1982. They would use it to open their live sets, 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). The Live Killers version was released as a single in the US and Japan in August 1979.\n

Music video

The music video for \"We Will Rock You\" was filmed in 1978 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:\n

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.\n

Personnel

Information is based on the album's liner notes\n

Freddie Mercury – lead and backing vocals, hand claps, foot stamping
Brian May – guitars, backing vocals, hand claps, foot stamping
Roger Taylor – backing vocals, hand claps, foot stamping
John Deacon – hand claps, foot stamping
Elizabeth Edwards – backing vocals, hand claps, foot stamping
Andrew Turner – backing vocals, hand claps, foot stamping

Chart performance

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Certifications

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Notable cover versions

Five + Queen version

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British boy band Five released a cover of \"We Will Rock You\" on 17 July 2000. It was the fourth single released from their second studio album, Invincible (1999). The song contains rap verses from Five's members Jason \"J\" Brown and Richard \"Abs\" Breen, and features two members of Queen: Brian May on guitar and Roger Taylor on drums (only on the single version); however, they do not sing any vocals on the track. Freddie Mercury had died in November 1991, nearly a decade before this version's release, and John Deacon had retired from public life three years before the release of the Five cover.\n

The song charted at number one on the UK Singles Chart, making it Five's second number-one single, and their ninth consecutive top-ten hit.\n

\nTrack listings\n

\"Megamix\" consists of four songs by Five: \"Don't Wanna Let You Go\", \"If Ya Gettin' Down\", \"Keep On Movin'\", and \"We Will Rock You\".\n

UK CD1\n

\"We Will Rock You\" (radio edit) – 3:08

\"Keep On Movin'\" (The Five-A-Side Mix) – 3:32

We Will Rock You

Broadcast History