Everything about Crazy Little Thing Called Love totally explained
"
Crazy Little Thing Called Love" is a song performed by the
English rock band
Queen, written by singer
Freddie Mercury. While it peaked at number two in the
UK, it hit number one on the
U.S. charts on
February 23 1980, remaining there for four consecutive weeks. It topped the charts in
Australia for six weeks.
The video for the song features the Queen crest on Taylor's bass drum even though the band had stopped using the crest from their live shows many years before.
Composition
The song is written in a
rockabilly style, with
Freddie Mercury singing in an
Elvis Presley-esque fashion. Though the singing has been attributed to Elvis, The King died in 1977, three years before the song was released on the
1980 Queen album
The Game.
As reported by Mercury in
Melody Maker,
May 2,
1981, he composed "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" on the guitar in just five to ten minutes. Other accounts say that he wrote it while lounging in a bubble bath in the Bayerischer Hof Hotel in Munich during one of Queen's extensive Munich recording sessions. He took it to the studio shortly after writing it and presented it to bandmates
Roger Taylor and
John Deacon. The three of them, with their new producer
Mack, recorded it at Musicland Studios in
Munich. The entire song was reportedly recorded in less than half an hour (although Mack says it was six hours), which may have helped create its fresh and catchy sound. The speed it took to record was due to the fact that Mercury had composed the arrangements for the other bandmates before presenting the song to the band, so all the other bandmates had to do was play. The instruments used were a
Ludwig drum kit (Taylor),
Fender Precision Bass (Deacon) and Martin D-18 Acoustic Guitar (Mercury).
Lead guitarist
Brian May almost missed the chance to be a part of the song: by the time he arrived at the studios, they'd almost finished editing it for the single release. Fortunately there was enough time for him to play the guitar solo (on a
Fender Telecaster) and sing backing vocals.
Originally Brian May was opposed to the idea of playing a
Fender Telecaster for this song as he said in his 1984
Star Licks video. May stated "For Crazy Little Thing Called Love they made me play this Telecaster, which I don't want to do."
While the song is rockabilly in feel, the harmonic structure demonstrates awareness of the intervening twenty-odd years — the
subdominant of the subdominant (for example, the bVII) is freely used, and the bVI-bVII-I progression (see "
Lady Madonna") provides the main hook of the song.
The song contains a rare example of a band mentioning a member by name in the lyrics ("Ready Freddie"). Queen would later surpass this by mentioning all four members in their song "
The Invisible Man".
Single release
The "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" single was very successful for the band, hitting number two in the UK and becoming the first U.S. number-one hit for the band in spite of
Elektra Records' reluctance to release it as a single as
The Game wasn't finished yet. There's an unconfirmed legend (commented on by Roger Taylor in the radio show
In the Studio which devoted an episode to the making of
The Game, and by Brian May on his website) that declares
John Lennon was inspired by "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" to go back to the music business. Whether this is true or not is still unknown, but it's a fact that Lennon had listened to the band and he did try new influences on his
Double Fantasy album.
Charts
Live history
In November 1979, Queen began what they called the '
Crazy Tour', playing nineteen gigs in the UK and one in
Ireland. One of its central numbers consisted of Mercury walking in with an
Ovation 12-string guitar to perform this piece; often the audience thought it was a joke as Freddie Mercury wasn't typically known to be a guitar player. However he could indeed play, even if he was very modest about his guitar technique (he often introduced "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" by saying "I can only play three chords").
On stage, "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" was an important part of the show. Brian May often used three different guitars during the song: the first verse was played by Freddie Mercury alone with his guitar, then May joined with another Ovation Acoustic; before the third verse he'd already switched to a Telecaster on which he performed the solo. During the sing-along part (famous for its "ready Freddie" line) Brian May again changed instruments to his home-made
Red Special. From
1984 onwards Mercury replaced the acoustic with another Telecaster as seen at Live Aid.
At their Live Aid performance, Mercury deliberately warbled some of the words to acknowledge the song's resemblance with the Presley sound.
After the last Queen tour in 1986, the former Queen band members have performed it many times: at the
Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert in 1992 they played it with
Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant on vocals. Brian May played a Godin Thinline A-12 for the first part and then the Red Special. May also performed it with
Bryan Adams in 2002. Most recently May and Taylor have performed with
Paul Rodgers (labelled as "
Queen + Paul Rodgers"), with Rodgers singing and playing Freddie Mercury's parts with a Yamaha; May also played a Yamaha for the first part. The tune was also performed at Queen's induction to the
Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003, featuring
Wynonna Judd on vocals.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Crazy Little Thing Called Love'.
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