TOP 40 DEBUT: January 12, 1980
PEAK POSITION: #1 (February 23, 1980)
“Bohemian Rhapsody” never got to #1. Queen’s masterpiece, a six-minute epic in three movements and shortlist candidate for Greatest Single Of All Time, barely even broke the Top 10 upon its initial release in America. “Bohemian Rhapsody” eventually peaked at #9, staying there from April 24 to May 1, 1976. (Over those two weeks, Billboard’s top spot was held by Johnnie Taylor’s “Disco Lady” and the Bellamy Brothers’ “Let Your Love Flow,” which speaks volumes about our nation's Bicentennial headspace.)
Queen did no better with their follow-up, “You’re My Best Friend,” which only reached #16 in July of the same year. Same with “Somebody To Love” (#13, January ‘77) and “Fat Bottomed Girls/Bicycle Race” (#24, January ’79). (Given my undying love for “Fat Bottomed Girls” and “Bicycle Race,” that one hurts.) You’d figure the double-sided “We Will Rock You/We Are The Champions” would’ve been the one to finally reach the summit, simply by virtue of being the most famous stadium anthem in the history of stadiums, but nope. Three weeks at #4 in February 1978. (“Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees took pole position during that run. Apparently, in ’78, “We Will Rock You” had nothing on Saturday Night Fever.)
All the above chart data probably seems inconceivable to the multitude of younger Queen fans who didn’t discover the band—or weren’t even born—until after Freddie Mercury passed away from AIDS-related complications on November 24, 1991. That’s because their view of history (or at least the history surrounding Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor, and John Deacon) is… slightly skewed. Anyone below a certain age never got to experience the actual Queen—a vibrant, eclectic, occasionally indulgent rock quartet—in real time. They only know Queen: The Legacy. The two versions look and sound remarkably similar. They are not the same.
Queen: The Legacy is a larger-than-life creation, mythologized on movie screens (Bohemian Rhapsody, Freddie role played by Rami Malek) and roughly approximated on concert stages (“The Rhapsody Tour,” Freddie role played by Adam Lambert). Queen: The Legacy has now lasted twenty-eight years, nearly a decade longer than the original band itself. (By my math, the “Legacy” version first appeared on April 20, 1992, when the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert for AIDS Awareness drew a worldwide audience of 1.2 billion viewers. May and Taylor have ensured it hasn’t disappeared since.) Thanks to reissues and endless compilations, this version has sold more albums; between the movie, the We Will Rock You musical, and endless tours, it’s generated more income. At this point, Queen: The Legacy is probably more popular than the real version ever was.
Cynicism aside, I honestly find it amazing to watch generations of kids fall for this band now, just as I did, decades ago, back in junior high. (Thanks to whoever loaned me that Greatest Hits cassette in the summer of ’85.) But I still think something got lost on the way to the “Legacy.” The Queen I grew up on, and the Queen I still prefer, were a more human-sized endeavor: nerdy college kids from London who opened for Mott the Hoople, lost a Grammy to the Starland Vocal Band (again, people did not fully appreciate “Bohemian Rhapsody” back in the day), and snuck “dirty” posters into their record albums.
The Queen of the late Seventies got plenty big. Just not record-breakingly big. They were playful, goofy, mischievous, and still prone to throwing random ideas against the wall to see if they’d stick. One of those ideas was “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” And of course, that’s the one that did what “Bohemian” and “Champions” could not: It got them to #1.
Queen never met a genre they couldn’t assimilate. Gospel, British music hall, early speed metal: they’d tackle them all. Invariably, each one would emerge sounding like... well, another Queen song. Some credit for that chameleonic attitude must go to May, Taylor, and Deacon, all incredibly skilled musicians adept in a variety of musical styles. But let's not split hairs: Queen leapfrogged across entire musical categories largely because of the man born Farrokh Bulsara.
Freddie Mercury was one of rock’s great frontmen, a mesmerizing stage presence with the range of an opera diva and twice the flamboyance. In the studio, that flamboyance became a weapon; more than almost any vocalist before or since, Mercury was capable of remaking entire tracks in his image through sheer force of will. “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” is, ostensibly, a rockabilly song. Queen had never attempted to record a rockabilly song. (The closest they came was probably “Bring Back That Leroy Brown,” the supremely silly ragtime number towards the end of Sheer Heart Attack.) But that was the style Freddie wanted to tackle. And damn if Queen didn’t nail a perfect approximation of rockabilly on their very first try.
Mercury had the initial idea for “Crazy Little Thing” while taking a bubble bath at the Bayerischer Hotel in Munich, Germany; upon exiting the tub, he wrapped a towel around his waist, found an acoustic guitar, and composing the entire song in ten minutes. That’s such a perfect story, I don’t even care if it’s true. (Head roadie Peter Hince later confirmed this account, but c’mon: It’s entirely possible Freddie slipped him fifty bucks on the condition he keep the legend going.) A gifted pianist and composer, Mercury was, by his own admission, rudimentary on guitar. So “Crazy Little Thing” contains just six chords, making it one of the simplest numbers—barring “We Will Rock You,” obviously—in the Queen canon. That simplicity is key to making the song work. And the band, to their credit, understood that immediately.
Queen had decamped to Munich for a handful of one-week sessions, with no plans to make an entire album. Mercury wasn’t thinking “potential single”; he simply wanted to capture his newest composition as quickly as possible. That's how “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” wound up being recorded easily, almost spontaneously: just Taylor and Deacon holding down the rhythm section, and Freddie, for the first time on record, handling guitar.
Throughout their career, Queen embraced production. And there’s a lot of production on The Game, the 1980 album that the band eventually did wind up making, in Munich, over the course of a full year. But almost none of it found its way onto “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” the record’s first single. New producer Reinhold Mack realized, smartly, that the best way to approximate the sound of early rock n’ roll was to record using those same early methods. That meant live tracks, room ambiance, and as few overdubs as possible.
The drum part is minimal. The principal backbeat comes from handclaps. Taylor only pops during the stop-and-start breakdowns; half the time, he’s performing his fills on the snare rim. The true star of the show is Deacon, whose vintage walking bass line stitches the whole thing together beautifully. In later interviews, Mack stated that the basic tracks were done in six hours. The band claimed thirty minutes.
Mack once joked that “Crazy Little Thing” had to be recorded quickly “before Brian could get there,” a subtle jab at the guitarist’s tendency to spend weeks overdubbing his multilayered parts. But according to May, the song really was done by the time he reached the studio—right down to the guitar solo, courtesy of one Mister Mercury. Unfortunately, Freddie’s licks disappeared somewhere along the way, so Brian wound up on the track after all. (Whether the original solo was truly lost, or purposely erased, remains the subject of some debate.) Believe me, I'd love to hear Freddie Mercury shred as much as the next guy, but giving lead duties back to May? Definitely the wiser decision.
Practically every electric guitar part on every Queen track comes from one single instrument: Brian’s beloved “Red Special,” a hand-crafted axe built by May and his father over a two-year span in the early 1960s. But on “Crazy Little Thing,” he’s playing a Fender Telecaster. It's a rare concession, made at Mack’s urging to better replicate the period sound, and the change-up fits the song perfectly. May nails the retro vibe: underplaying at every turn, throwing a few stinging jabs around the vocal, and often dropping out completely. (Listen to the track again; his electric doesn’t even show up until the third verse.) Brian's solo, once it finally arrives, is a sharp, clean, bluesy tour de force, graced with slapback echo and eerily reminiscent of May’s early guitar hero, James Burton.
For those who don’t know their rockabilly history, Burton is one of the legends of the genre: He graced recordings by Ricky Nelson, played the solo on the original “Susie Q,” and headed up Elvis Presley’s band from 1969 until the King’s death in 1977. Elvis, of course, also factors heavily into Mercury’s own performance. May later called it a “tribute,” but that really undersells what Freddie’s doing here: affectation born of actual affection, miles beyond mere mimicry and more like a knowing, winking homage. Just listen to the way Mercury drops into his lower register for those clipped verse lyrics: “This thing/ Called love/ I just/ Can’t handle it.” He stops just shy of Elvis’ trademark “hiccup,” but like so many of Freddie’s jokes, it’s strongly implied. (Several years later, a prankster made the connection even more obvious, as you’ll see in the “Bonus Bits” below.)
Most of “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” honestly, feels like Freddie simply goofing around—and having a grand ol’ time doing it. The doo-wop backing vocals? His falsetto yelp on “hot and cold fev-ah”? Lyrics like “It swings/ It jives/ It shakes all over like a jellyfish”? He’s practically daring you not to laugh. It’s another element of the original Queen that gets shortchanged by the “Legacy” edition; these were four serious musicians who rarely took themselves all that seriously. I appreciate that live performances of “Crazy Little Thing” now include an entire arena of Queen fans bellowing “Ready Freddie!” in memory of the late vocalist, turning a throwaway line into something sweetly poignant. But it’s also worth remembering that the original lyric was goofy as hell, a knowingly silly capper to a knowingly silly song.
At the time of its release, nothing on the radio sounded like “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” Elvis had been dead two years, the rockabilly revivalists in Stray Cats weren’t yet signed to a label, and Grease was long gone from theaters (not that it resembled actual Fifties rock in any meaningful way). There was no precedent for this kind of single from Queen; there was no precedent for this kind of single from any major arena-rock band. And yet, “Crazy Little Thing” wound up being one of the biggest hits the quartet would ever have. There’s a lesson there, somewhere. No one in Queen overthought the process, or tried to turn this catchy little tune into something it wasn’t. “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” still resonates for one simple reason: It’s an incredibly fun song. Period.
Even by Queen’s typically atypical standards, “Crazy Little Thing” wound up being an anomaly. The band never returned to this particular style again, and certainly not for The Game, an otherwise thoroughly modern album which arrived in stores four months after its lead single hit #1. In America, all the goodwill generated by “Crazy” eventually dissipated; a delayed follow-up, “Play The Game,” missed the Top 40 entirely. But Queen had another ace up their sleeve. Their very next single would end up being one of the biggest of the entire decade.
GRADE: 9/10
I WANT MY MTV: By 1980, Queen had nearly a dozen proper videos under their belt, including the groundbreaking, historic clip for “Bohemian Rhapsody.” So yeah, they knew what they were doing. And Freddie, as always, knew how to wink at the audience. The video for “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” works on several levels: On the surface, it’s a purposefully campy clip, pitched somewhere between the film version of Grease and the popular syndicated series Sha Na Na (1977-81). Dig deeper, and you’ve got a short-haired Mercury (absent his iconic Eighties ‘stache), playing up the bisexual elements of John Travolta’s Danny in full leather-daddy wardrobe. Howlingly funny now, but at the time? It definitely went over the heads of its mainstream audience—including yours truly.
BONUS BITS: Dwight Yoakam’s version, taken from his greatest hits album Last Chance For A Thousand Years, hit #12 on the country charts in 1999. Attempted to cover Queen is almost always a fool’s game, but Yoakam calibrates this one perfectly to his own Bakersfield sound; it’s nearly the equal of the original.
BONUS BONUS BITS: Proving the Internet makes everybody a little bit stupider, here’s an Elvis impersonator named Michael Durcan covering “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” followed by a bunch of commentators seriously wondering if Presley himself sang the original version. (Mercury wrote his song in 1979. Elvis passed away in 1977.)