I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of this Freddie Mercury guy, but he was pretty, pretty good. His work in Queen is easily one of the most common to get the “isolated vocal track” treatment, because of his aforementioned unreal pipes (outside of the other head of the coin, the oft-faked isolated vocal tracks meant to shame singers for being average). Check out Mr. Mercury proving once again that he was mega-talented in the isolated vocal track of “We Are the Champions.”
If we’re putting these things on a scale, I’d say Freddie comes in above his own performance of “Under Pressure,” but underneath the gold standard of the genre, Marvin Gaye’s “Heard It Through the Grapevine.” In terms of entertainment value, it’s got nothing on those David Lee Roth tracks that circulated throughout the Internet a few years back. Still, Mercury’s is an excellent performance and worthy of being added to the “music is sh*t nowadays” canon alongside the meme comparing the number of songwriters who worked on “Bohemian Rhapsody” and Beyoncé’s “Girls.”
If you just can’t get enough of standalone vox, check out Eminem’s isolated pipes on “Lose Yourself” and Outkast’s vocals on their apocalyptic Stankonia cut “B.O.B.”
(Via Slate)
