A team of international researchers have pinpointed the scientific reasons why Freddie Mercury was such a good singer.
Urban legend maintains that Mercury had a four-octave singing range, and while the team couldn’t exactly prove that, they did discover some pretty interesting facts about the legendary lead singer and lyricist for Queen after an in-depth scientific analysis of his distinctive voice.
The team of researchers studied Mercury’s voice, using sound recordings of his past performances and interviews in their analysis and their findings were recently published in the journal Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology. “Overall, based on perceptual assessment, Freddie Mercury seemed to have ample control over vocal registration,” the study states.
One interesting element of Mercury’s singing was how he could sound finessed at times and more rough at others.
The analysis also suggests that Mercury was actually more of a baritone despite usually being billed as a tenor.
Most interesting? The study also revealed that Mercury’s vocal chords vibrated faster than other people’s: A typical vibrato will fluctuate between 5.4 Hz and 6.9 Hz. Mercury’s was 7.04 Hz, beyond even that acclaimed opera singer Luciano Pavarotti.
Mercury died in 1991 at age 45.
