Queen: The Greatest Legend Lives Forever

We Will Rock You

Buddy you're a boy make a big noise
Playin' in the street gonna be a big man some day
You got mud on yo' face
You big disgrace
Kickin' your can all over the place
Singin'
We will we will rock you
We will we will rock you
Buddy you're a young man hard man
Shoutin' in the street gonna take on the world some day
You got blood on yo' face
You big disgrace
Wavin' your banner all over the place
We will we will rock you

(Sing it!)
We will we will rock you

Buddy you're an old man poor man
Pleadin' with your eyes gonna make you some peace some day
You got mud on your face
Big disgrace
Somebody better put you back into your place
We will we will rock you
(Sing it!)
We will we will rock you
(Everybody)
We will we will rock you
We will we will rock you
(Alright)

~•~•~•~•👑•~•~•~•~

♪ Song fact: Queen guitarist Brian May wrote this, and claimed the idea for the song came in a dream. He told Mojo magazine October 2008 that he wanted to "create a song that the audience could participate in."

In the Days of Our Lives documentary, he remembered a gig where the crowd chanted the Liverpool Football Club anthem, "You'll Never Walk Alone" at the band as they left the stage. "I went to bed thinking, 'What could you ask them to do?' They're all squeezed in there, but they can clap their hands, they can stamp their feet, and they can sing," he noted. "In the morning I woke up and had the idea in my head for 'We Will Rock You." Freddie Mercury wrote the song that follows on the album, "We Are The Champions." Although Queen did not intend it this way, the two songs are usually played together. The songs segue together on the album, so disc jockeys would let them play, which is how listeners got used to hearing it. "We Will Rock You" was released as a double A-side single with "We Are The Champions." Since the single's release, the band has almost always used "Rock You" and "Champions" as a back-to-back encore, with "Champions" closing the show and segueing into a tape playing Queen's version of "God Save The Queen."A funny story emerged from the sessions surrounding "We Will Rock You." The punk band Sex Pistols were recording at Wessex studios around the same time, and bassist Sid Vicious drunkenly interrupted the Queen sessions to berate Mercury and ask if he'd "brought ballet to the masses" yet, as he'd been quoted as wanting to do in an earlier NME interview.
"

I called him, I dunno, Simon Ferocious or something, and just pushed him out. I think... yeah, I think we passed that test" noted Freddie with a wink in one interview, whilst drummer Taylor noted in the Days of our Lives documentary that Vicious was "a moron... an idiot!"
Perhaps this all explains the lyrics to 'We Will Rock You'?
Incidentally, it was Queen sed to bring you sunshine
Now all I ever do is bring you accidentally gave the Sex Pistols their big break - they pulled out of an appearance on the Grundy TV show, so label EMI sent the Sex Pistols on in their place in what turned out to be the infamous "filth and the fury" interview.
The remaining members of Queen performed this at their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001. Brian May and Roger Taylor took turns on the vocals.
On Queen's next album, they had another set of songs disc jockeys played together. "Bicycle Race" and "Fat Bottomed Girls " were segued together on their album Jazz . Those songs were also released as a double A-side single.
In the US, this is often played at sporting events in an effort to intimidate the opposing team. It plays well in stadiums where fans are encouraged to stomp their feet and make a lot of noise.
In London, a Queen musical called We Will Rock You opened in 2002. The show is about a futuristic world where there are no musical instruments and a lack of creativity, but with the help of Queen's music, a bunch of renegades liberate the planet. It was panned by critics, but became a very popular show. In 2004, the show opened in Las Vegas.
Notable movie uses of this song include the 2001 film A Knight's Tale, where the song is used to open the film. In the Mighty Ducks movies, this song is used to fire up the crowds just like in real-life hockey. But this time, it's sung as "we will quack you." Other movie uses include:
Heaven Is for Real (2014)
Sucker Punch (2011)
The Pacifier (2005)
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004)
The Recruit (2003)
The Replacements (2000)
Any Given Sunday (1999)
FM (1978) The band noted that for the News of the World album in 1977, they wanted to go for a more simple, stripped-down sound. Roger Taylor notes in several interviews that perhaps this was a response to the Punk explosion, which actively encouraged stripped-down instrumentation. "We knew we couldn't reinvent ourselves into a punk band, but perhaps maybe we could make it a bit more simple... to keep more in tune with what was going on at the time" notes the drummer. The band (except for Brian May, of course) even got shorter haircuts around this time.
May said in Q magazine, March 2008: "At the opposite extreme stylistically (referring to the musical excess of "The Millionaire Waltz"), there's almost nothing in this. It's our 'three ages of man' anthem."
Queen never released this as a single in the UK. However in 2000 the boy band Five decided they wanted to cover the track and they approached the remaining members of Queen. Not only did they say yes, but also Brian May and Roger Taylor agreed to play on it. This version, which was credited to Five and Queen, spent one week at the top of the UK singles chart.
In an interview with National Public Radio's Terry Gross, Brian May said that his degree in astrophysics helped in the recording of the crucial 'stomp-stomp-clap!" rhythm of the song. He explained: "Being a physicist, I said, 'Suppose there were 1,000 people doing this; what would be happening?' And I thought, Well, you would be hearing them stamping. You would also be hearing a little bit of an effect, which is due to the distance that they are from you. So I put lots of individual repeats on them. Not an echo but a single repeat at various distances. And the distances were all prime numbers."
May continued: "Now, much later on, people designed a machine to do this. But that's what we did. When we recorded each track, we put a delay of a certain length on it. And none of the delays were harmonically related. So there's no echo on it whatsoever, but the clapped sound - they spread around the stereo, but they also kind of spread from a distance from you - so you just feel like you're in the middle of a large number of people stamping and clapping."
Brian May told NPR how recording the song in a church helped with its sound. "We were very lucky," he said. "We were working in an old, disused church in North London, and it already had a nice sound. And there were some old boards lying around, but they just seemed ideal to stamp on."
He expanded on this in the Days of our Lives documentary: "I found some old boards under the stairs, and thought - well, what does this sound like? And the rest is history."