In obvious confirmation news, a bunch of Europeans sat around listening to old 70’s records and 8-tracks and then wrote about it using big words.
Regardless of what they might think personally about Queen, most rock critics and music fans alike wish they could get grant money to sit around and listen to classic rock. Now, a group of Austrian, Czech, and Swedish researchers with nothing better to do conducted research on lead singer Freddy Mercury (top), the results of which were published in the journal Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology for Dummies.
The research began after a logopedian, a phoniatrician, and a vocolologist walked into a bar and were refused service. An exopsychochemist who couldn’t hear over the loud music declined to participate when he found out they were studying Freddy Mercury and not Eddie Murphy (below).
The researchers requested anonymity because they were out at a bar when they were supposed to be working.
What they discovered was that he likely employed subharmonics, an artificial ventricular fold enhancer banned by the European Tenors Committee. Most humans never speak or sing with their ventricular folds to avoid being sued for causing global warming by environmental litigators.
They couldn’t confirm the long-held belief that Mercury’s range spanned four octaves, or any other hypothesis, because Freddy Mercury died in 1991. (Disclaimer: Attempts to reanimate him as a zombie revenant are still tied up in court.) However, they did discover some convenient interesting tidbits the night before the paper was due. For one, despite being known largely as a tenor, identifying himself as a tenor, and singing in a tenor voice, the researchers determined that claiming he was a baritone was better click-bait. That, coupled with anecdotal evidence that Mercury once turned down a gig with the Queen Lantern Corps (below) because he was afraid fans would think he wasn’t a tenor, led to the conclusion that they could say anything they wanted.
It’s true that without a living test subject, the researchers were free to make up stuff without anyone being able to prove otherwise. With no one to stop them, the team brought in professional rock vocolologist Daniel Zangger-Borch (below), killed him, and reanimated his corpse into a zombie revenant.* (Full disclosure: Zangger-Borch (below, before and after) does drive a Mercury Cougar, and was trying to grow a mustache before his reanimation.)
They filmed his larynx at 4000 frames per second in order to look at exactly how someone who is not the Queen frontman created the iconic rough growls and jaw-dropping vibratos. (The video is currently posted on the website NaughtyLarynxes.com.)
The predetermined conclusion was clear from the beginning: Freddie Mercury has a voice unlike anyone else in rock ‘n’ roll.**
Former child star and logopediatrician Danica McKellar (shown above improving the self-esteem of young girls by forming conclusions first and justifying them using numbers afterwards) analyzed the film and determined that Zangger-Borch’s stomach was growling from a hunger for brains, and advanced decomposition had caused his jaw to drop off. She said that while a typical vibrato will fluctuate between 5.4Hz and 6.9Hz, Mercury’s was 7.04Hz, one of the most italicized numbers ever made up for this article.
There’s a lot of scientific and analytical music terminology in the full study, most of which is only understandable to other phoniatricists. Frankly, we didn’t understand any of it, so we quit reading after the first page.
Click here for even more logopological, phoniatrical, vocolological fun.
* The art of creating zombie revenant singers is called Phoniatrics.
** At a press conference, the researchers issued a correction, saying that “Freddy Mercury has a voice unlike anyone else in rock ‘n’ roll. Except Daniel Zangger-Borch, of course. Clearly Daniel has exactly the same voice as Freddy Mercury. That’s what makes our findings so grant-worthy, if you catch our meaning.”
A Labor of Like 