QAL TSMGO analysis

Adam handles this one brilliantly.  I miss the glory notes of 2012 and am not sure how I feel about the very recent way he started ending the last big moment with the low start and then rising intonation of shoowooowooowooowooo to a higher note.  The first time he tried it he went for a semi-glory note which i liked...now though he's ending it a bit short and I'm not quite a fan.

Of course I understand the concept of saving his voice for a gruelling tour....but Day 2 of Hammersmith in 2012 remains my fav version of the song...

BUT glory notes aside, this song has never had a complaint from me.  Beautifully handled.

The strange thing for me was how as the tour went on this song seemed to get lost in the incredible set list. It seemed to be rarely mentioned in reviews as the accolades went mostly to KQ, STL, LK & WWTLF. I honestly wasn't really surprised when it got dropped for a few shows because it began to feel almost anticlimactic. Adam may have been trying to find another way to beef it up but it just wasn't coming across as powerfully as it had in the past. Between the addition of ITLOTG, KQ & LK and the improvement Adam showed with STL by the time we got to TSMGO it just didn't have the same impact for the audience and being followed by Bo-rap didn't help it to stick in peoples heads.

Hi there

I'm one of the IDF temporary people, but I just saw this section of the forum. I'm a long-time Queenie who has only just discovered Adam, so I've many happy memories of hearing Freddie's voice. I suppose it shows how truly unique his voice was that it's taken more than twenty years to find another singer who can truly get round Queen's difficult repertoire. Freddie didn't have the extensive vocal training that Adam has had, and I think he was initial self-taught then probably got some coaching. He always loved opera and this shows in Queen's music and the stuff he did in the 1980s with the opera singer Montserrat Caballe. I know he had lots of conversations with her about how opera singers "do it".

I'm a classically-trained singer (mostly opera) so I know a lot of the technical background stuff because I've done it myself. However, I'm hazy on how you sing heavily amplified music as I've never really done much of it and the techniques are very different. However, the principles of actually singing the notes are exactly the same.


When TSMGO was written, Freddie was extremely ill as a result of HIV/AIDS and was probably getting into the end stages of the disease. He'd gained some weight in the late 80s as a result of the steroids they were giving him to help control the disease processes, but by 1991, he had lost an enormous amount of weight. For singers the weight you carry can make a difference to the sound you make - you more muscle to put underneath the sound to support it. The result of this was that the very last Queen songs tend to have a higher range and also are generally placed higher (classical singers call this "tessitura - where the whole songs sits within the vocal range). TSMGO is therefore very high in the range and I suspect there aren't many male singers who could get round it. You need to have a naturally very high voice to start with (and Adam is a high tenor) and also it's technically difficult because of how the phrases are written.

So, why has Adam changed the end of the song? There could be a couple of reasons - he could just prefer going at the phrase from a lower note and climbing to the glory note, as it's spectacular. Also, if he is doing the physical thing of putting himself flat on the floor, you can make sure your torso is in the right position by the time you're going for the top notes. If you tried to do a move like that coming straight in on a high note, you'd more than likely do yourself some damage.

When you have to start a phrase with a very high note, your vocal cords have to be stretched really tight or the note will split. It's also a really tiring thing to do - as someone else has already said, TSMGO is written in an "operatic" style and a lot of the big opera composers use the same device of putting the climax of a song together by making the singer come in at the top of their range. Freddie loved Verdi opera and this is a typical Verdi tactic - I've sung arias where you have to come in on a high C/B to do the final cadenza and they're a bugger. You're often tired by then and if you have any tension in your voice, the note won't work properly. I'm not sure what the high note is at the end of TSMGO (must check it on the piano - I don't have perfect pitch), but it could be just that Adam didn't want it to be hit and miss, so worked out the alternative ending, which sounds great.

Sorry, I've rambled a lot. Blame it on me being a Brit...

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