(Incidentally, you can read my thoughts on Tom Jones and Reed & Mason's "Delilah" in A Song for the Season.)Īs it happens, there are at least another dozen songs called "We Are the Champions", most of them British, and some of them by respected figures such as the light-music composer Reg Tilsley, and Mike Berry, a mainstay of the BBC masterpiece "Are You Being Served?", and Hal Shaper, lyricist of "Softly As I Leave You" and husband of a former agent of mine. And thus, with reluctance, I set aside Freddie Mercury's cat. So nobody should be writing another song called "White Christmas" or "Over the Rainbow" - or "Delilah".
But I am mindful of Sammy Cahn's injunction, made very forcefully to me over the years, that writers should "respect title". Which relationship-wise is rather more final than peeing over Freddie Mercury's furniture seems to be. And, of course, there can only be one song called "Delilah" - Les Reed and Barry Mason's great anthem for Tom Jones about seeing the flickering shadow of love on her blind and then stabbing your woman to death. My only problem was that Freddie named the song after his own cat - Delilah. When you pee all over my Chippendale suite. When you cuddle up and go to sleep beside me In fact, I considered including a Freddie Mercury song on my bestselling cat album, Feline Groovy: Songs for Swingin' Cats - because Freddie wrote a great cat song. Not because I'm not partial to his oeuvre. Those words and music are by Freddie Mercury, who's making a somewhat belated debut in our Song of the Week. Björn and Benny wrote a great song for losers standing small, but, when you're on the winning side, you want a song that just lets you open up and crow: As Abba so shrewdly observed:Īnd, when the judges decide, the loser has to abide. So, in his absence, we are pleased to offer a reprise of this popular Song of the Week essay from February 2018:įor one reason or another, I'm in an oddly triumphalist mood this week - and, when that's the way you're feeling, there's only one way to go. As for Freddie Mercury, Mark is traveling today and far from the Internet. If you haven't yet sampled any of Steyn's poetry anthology, we've re-archived them for you in a new easy-to-access Netflix-style home page.
SONGS WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS HOW TO
'Cause we are the champions The easy, fast & fun way to learn how to sing: 30DaySinger.We have two eminent versifiers for you this weekend at SteynOnline - first, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, whose translation of the fifteenth-century poet François Villon is the latest in our video series of Steyn's Sunday Poems and second, Freddie Mercury. The easy, fast & fun way to learn how to sing: I've paid my duesĪnd we mean to go on and on and on and on It also presents for the first time the original recorded length of the track, which is two choruses more than the 1977 edited single.
It was made from previously unheard vocal and instrumental takes from the original multi-track tapes. 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. The song has also been covered by many artists.
In 2011, a team of scientific researchers concluded that the song was the catchiest in the history of popular music."We Are the Champions" has become an anthem for victories at sporting events, including as an official theme song for the 1994 FIFA World Cup, and has been often used or referenced in popular culture. In 2009, "We Are the Champions" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and was voted the world's favourite song in a 2005 Sony Ericsson world music poll. The song was a worldwide success, reaching number two in the UK Singles Chart and number four on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States. Written by lead singer Freddie Mercury, it is considered one of rock's most recognisable anthems. "We Are the Champions" is a song by the British rock band Queen, first released on their 1977 album News of the World.