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1977 single by Queen From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"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.[3] Rolling Stone ranked it number 330 of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time" in 2004,[4] 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.[5][6]
| "We Will Rock You" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
.png) One of the French single picture sleeves | ||||
| Single by Queen | ||||
| from the album News of the World | ||||
| A-side | "We Are the Champions" | |||
| Released | 7 October 1977[1] | |||
| Studio | Wessex Sound, London | |||
| Genre | Arena rock[2] | |||
| Length | 2:02 | |||
| Label | ||||
| Songwriter(s) | Brian May | |||
| Producer(s) |
| |||
| Queen singles chronology | ||||
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| Music video | ||||
| "We Will Rock You" on YouTube | ||||
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, mostly due 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" and "We Are the Champions" were written in response to an event that occurred during the A Day at the Races Tour.[citation needed] 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.[14]
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 drum riser[15] 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.[16] 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.[17] The "stomp, stomp, clap" sounds were later used in the Queen + Paul Rodgers song "Still Burnin'".[18]
When performed live, the song is usually followed by "We Are the Champions", as they were designed to run together.[7] The songs are often paired on the radio and at sporting events, where they are frequently played.[7] They were the last two songs Queen performed at Live Aid in 1985.[19]
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.
The music video for "We Will Rock You" was filmed in 1978 at the back garden of Roger Taylor's mansion.[20] It sees the band lip synching the song, hand clapping with gloves and foot stomping on a frozen ground.[20] In an interview with Billboard, Taylor spoke on filming the video:
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.[21]
Information is based on the album's liner notes[22]
Weekly charts
|
Year-end charts
|
| Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
|---|---|---|
| Brazil (Pro-Música Brasil)[46] | Platinum | 60,000‡ |
| Denmark (IFPI Danmark)[47] | Platinum | 90,000‡ |
| France (SNEP)[48] We Will Rock You / We Are The Champions |
Gold | 500,000* |
| Germany (BVMI)[49] | Platinum | 500,000‡ |
| Italy (FIMI)[50] | 2× Platinum | 100,000‡ |
| Japan (RIAJ)[51] Digital single |
Gold | 100,000* |
| Japan (RIAJ)[52] Ringtone |
2× Platinum | 500,000* |
| Spain (PROMUSICAE)[53] | 2× Platinum | 120,000‡ |
| United Kingdom (BPI)[54] sales since 2011 |
2× Platinum | 1,200,000‡ |
| United States (RIAA)[55] | 6× Platinum | 6,000,000‡ |
|
* Sales figures based on certification alone. | ||
| "We Will Rock You" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Single by Five + Queen | ||||
| from the album Invincible | ||||
| B-side |
| |||
| Released | 17 July 2000[56] | |||
| Length | 3:08 | |||
| Label | ||||
| Songwriter(s) | ||||
| Producer(s) | ||||
| Five singles chronology | ||||
| ||||
| Queen singles chronology | ||||
| ||||
| Music video | ||||
| "We Will Rock You" on YouTube | ||||
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.
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.[57]
"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".
UK CD1[58]
UK CD2[59]
UK cassette single[60]
European CD single[61]
Australian CD single[62]
Weekly charts
|
Year-end charts
|
| Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
|---|---|---|
| Australia (ARIA)[89] | Platinum | 70,000^ |
| United Kingdom (BPI)[90] | Silver | 200,000^ |
|
^ Shipments figures based on certification alone. | ||
A remix by KCPK, sung by a chorus of children under the name Forever Young, was released in a series of animated Evian adverts which aired in France, Germany and Belgium. The remix was later released as a single and entered the local charts.[91]
Chart performance
|
Year-end charts
|
American rapper Megan Thee Stallion covered "We Will Rock You" in a September 2024 Pepsi television advertisement.[103] On September 5, 2024, the song, sampling the original chorus, was released as a single; Queen are credited as co-lead artists.[104]
1990s
2000s
2010s
2020s
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