Hear How Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” Would Sound If Sung by Johnny Cash, David Bowie, Janis Joplin, Frank Sinatra & 38 Other Artists

I con­sid­er Fred­dy Mer­cury and Michael Jack­son as the great­est per­form­ers of all time. Their vocal abil­i­ties are what I look up to as a vocal­ist.  — Antho­ny Vin­cent

Antho­ny Vin­cent, the cre­ator of Ten Sec­ond Songs, has a flow­ing mane, a lean physique, and the cock­sure man­ner of a 20th cen­tu­ry rock god.

He also spends hours in his home stu­dio, peer­ing at a com­put­er mon­i­tor through read­ing glass­es.

His lat­est effort, above, Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” in the style of 42 oth­er artists, could seem like a gim­mick at first glance.

Con­sid­er, how­ev­er, all the research, time, and musi­cian­ship that went into it.

The YouTube star dis­ap­peared from the inter­net for a month in order to tack­le the beast that fans had long been beg­ging him for.

He emerged from this self-imposed sab­bat­i­cal refreshed, rec­om­mend­ing that per­haps “every­one should start pro­duc­ing songs in mul­ti­ple styles just so they too could take a vaca­tion from social media.”

Good idea, though I doubt many of us can mim­ic the wide range of vocal styles the large­ly self taught Vin­cent does, from  Muse’s lead singer Matt Belamy’s fabled high notes to the late Joe Strummer’s extreme­ly Eng­lish punk atti­tude to Janis Joplin at her most unfet­tered.

He also dis­plays an impres­sive facil­i­ty with a vari­ety of arrange­ments and instru­ments, though a cou­ple of off-hand­ed com­ments in the Mak­ing Of video, below, may not endear him to drum­mers, despite his obvi­ous respect for the essen­tial role per­cus­sion plays in struc­tur­ing his projects.

Var­i­ous ele­ments sug­gest­ed which artist to pair with each bite-sized sec­tion of “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody,” includ­ing sim­i­lar­i­ty of lyrics, notes, and arrange­ments. (“Mama mia” was a no brain­er…as was “Mama, didn’t mean to make you cry.”)

By def­i­n­i­tion, the mul­ti-style “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” required him to look beyond his own per­son­al favorites for artists to high­light, a process he applies to all of his mash ups. As he said in a 2015 inter­view with Radio Met­al:

Obvi­ous­ly I don’t lis­ten to Enya in my free time, I don’t go and put on a Gre­go­ri­an chant and lis­ten to it to relax. If I’m going to put an artist in there, it’s because I have some kind of respect for them in some way… At first my inten­tion was to pro­mote my busi­ness and now my inten­tions are to show that there are dif­fer­ent ways that a song can be heard and that there’s noth­ing wrong with lik­ing dif­fer­ent things. You shouldn’t be afraid of what you don’t under­stand. Just because some­one is growl­ing doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’s just a way of express­ing a song, there is real­ly noth­ing else to it.

His “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” trib­ute is com­prised of over 1800 care­ful­ly labelled tracks, an inspir­ing dis­play of dig­i­tal orga­ni­za­tion as well as tech­ni­cal prowess.

While some of Vincent’s cho­sen 42—David Bowie, Dream The­ater—did cov­er “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” in its entire­ty, an unfor­tu­nate side effect of his imper­son­ations are the way they whet our appetite for full cov­ers we’ll nev­er get to enjoy from the likes of John­ny Cash, Prince, Frank Sina­tra, Aretha Franklin….

Ulti­mate­ly, no one can hold a can­dle to the orig­i­nal, but there’s no harm in try­ing.

Read­ers, do you have a favorite from the line up below? Any­one you wish you could add to the list?

01. Queen

02. Me

03. The Chordettes

04. John­ny Cash

05. David Bowie

06. Ozzy Osbourne

07. Frank Sina­tra

08. Sam Cooke

09. Boyz II Men

10. Daft Punk

11. Janis Joplin

12. Scott Joplin (King Of Rag­time)

13. Skrillex

14. Hen­drix (Michael Winslow Ver­sion)

15. Ken­ny G

16. Bob­by McFer­rin

17. Star Wars

18. N.W.A.

19. Kendrick Lamar

20. Sys­tem Of A Down

21. Elvis Pres­ley

22. BOLLYWOOD

23. Bad Reli­gion

24. Bruno Mars

25. Death Grips

26. Chuck Berry

27. Michael jack­son

28. The Clash

29. Ray Charles

30. Aretha Franklin

31. Sog­gy Bot­tom Boys

32. Death

33. ABBA

34. Ghost

35. Muse

36. Vitas

37. Medieval Music

38. Frankie Val­li and the Four Sea­sons

39. Tool

40. Prince

41. Nir­vana

42. Dream The­ater

via Con­se­quence of Sound

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Joy of Expe­ri­enc­ing Queen’s Bohemi­an Rhap­sody for the Very First Time: Watch Three Reac­tion Videos

Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” Played by 28 Trom­bone Play­ers

Watch the Brand New Trail­er for Bohemi­an Rhap­sody, the Long-Await­ed Biopic on Fred­die Mer­cury & Queen

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 12 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.