In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, we’re talking about songs with a cappella interludes.

Queen, “Somebody To Love” (1976)

Calling anyone the “greatest” of anything is always asking for trouble. Still, I feel wholly confident in saying Freddie Mercury is the greatest rock vocalist of all time. Zooming past legends like Robert Plant and Mick Jagger, Mercury took vocals to a new level, adding operatic levels of harmonies to the mix. Queen’s other band members were no slouches either. Brian May matched Mercury’s vocal proficiencies on the guitar, and Roger Taylor and John Deacon provided a stellar rhythm section on drums and bass, but it’s the beyond-dynamic frontman you remember most about the band. May, Taylor, and Deacon didn’t even seem to mind. They totally got it.

Realizing that its most obvious asset was its singer/pianist/songwriter, Queen took its best songs and pulled the vocals out so the listener could marvel at Mercury’s insane range and unmatched emotional heights. The band’s ’70s heyday offers plenty of examples of these inspired a cappella moments, from “Bicycle Race” to “Fat Bottomed Girls,” culminating with the masterpiece of “Bohemian Rhapsody.” But for Mercury’s definitive performance, I’m going with the lovelorn anguish of “Somebody To Love.” Like Sinatra, Mercury’s emotional phrasing made even his arena-rock hits seem as intimate as the tiniest, saddest piano bar.

The song starts with a thin, two-syllable plaintive plea: “Ca-an?” leading to the song’s main query: “anybody find me somebody to love?” “Somebody To Love” finds its author and singer, Mercury, in more of a spiritual mood than usual. Unlike the rock opera of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the unbridled joy of “Don’t Stop Me Now,” or the anthemic heights of “We Will Rock You,” here Mercury is inspired by more intimate spirituals (specifically the voice of Aretha Franklin, who also knows from emotional music). He despairs of a life without love, and wonders if he will ever be free from this cage of isolation. Where “Bohemian Rhapsody” had a murder, a mother, and no shortage of drama, the loner from “Somebody To Love” actually describes the banality of his day: getting up, going to work (the chorus sticks up for him: “He works hard / Every day”), even as “everybody wants to put me down” and he’s got “nobody left to believe.” The tragedy here is on a much smaller scale, but to the narrator, just as painful, and life-draining. But as the narrator continues to ask God for some guidance, he is backed by Queen’s multi-layered gospel chorus of background vocals, offering the sense that even this lonely soul is not so solitary.

This vocal chorus punctuates almost every line Mercury sings, with Mercury, May, and Taylor creating a vocal wall that sounds like 100 voices, thanks to layering track over track in the studio. Even the guitar here is a tad restrained, to focus more on the sadness of the song, letting the vocals take center stage throughout. So the song’s dramatic climax is not one of May’s signature solos, but an a cappella build that starts with “Find me somebody to love,” led only by these plaintive, wanting voices. The plea is eventually backed with handclaps as the crescendo builds, working frantic variations on that same, singular demand. The band backs him up ably, but it’s Mercury’s show as usual, and it’s to his credit as a songwriter and vocalist that someone beloved and surrounded by millions puts this isolated sentiment over so sincerely.

You know that question about which band you would travel back in time to catch in its prime? For me, the answer is always Queen, for the chance to hear Freddie Mercury in person. There isn’t even anyone in second place.

FREDDIE MERCURY, THE OUTLANDISH frontman for Queen, whose worldwide hits like ``Bohemian Rhapsody'' and ``We Are the Champions'' combined gaudy theatrical pomp with heavy-metal bluster, became the first major rock star to die of AIDS when he succumbed to complications from the disease on November 24th at his London home. He was forty-five years old.
Mercury, whose real name was Frederick Bulsara, had not performed with Queen in concert since 1986. He had become a virtual recluse over the past two years, yet he repeatedly denied reports that he had contracted AIDS until the day before his death.

``The time has now come for my friends and fans around the world to know the truth,'' he said in his statement, explaining that he had waited so long to make the announcement because ``my privacy has always been very special to me.''

Although Mercury's condition was long rumored in the tabloid press and virtually an open secret in the music industry, his death still startled many fans and colleagues. Bouquets from Elton John, David Bowie, U2, Ringo Starr and the Scorpions adorned the West London Crematorium, where a brief funeral service in the Zoroastrian faith was held for his family and a few close friends, including the surviving Queen members, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon.

``Of all the more theatrical rock performers, Freddie took it further than the rest,'' says Bowie, who collaborated with Mercury and Queen on their 1981 hit ``Under Pressure.'' ``He took it over the edge. And of course, I always admired a man who wears tights. I only saw him in concert once, and as they say, he was definitely a man who could hold an audience in the palm of his hand. He could always turn a cliche to his advantage.''

Beginning in the early Seventies, the flamboyant Mercury - who cited Jimi Hendrix and Liza Minnelli as his main influences - led Queen through eighteen albums that sold 80 million copies worldwide, amassing almost a dozen U.S. hit singles, including his campy ``Killer Queen,'' the Elvis spoof ``Crazy Little Thing Called Love'' and the bass-heavy anthem ``Another One Bites the Dust.'' Queen's popularity nose-dived in the United States during the Eighties, but the group remained popular in England and around the world.

Queen laced British glam pop with swooping arias, corny vaudeville themes and heavy-rock bombast, but it was Mercury's wicked taste for wretched excess that set the band apart. ``Freddie was clearly out in left field someplace, outrageous onstage and offstage,'' says Capitol-EMI president and CEO Joe Smith, who headed Queen's American label, Elektra Records, at the peak of the group's success. ``He was the band's driving force, a tremendously creative man.''

Elektra's release of Mercury's overwrought, six-minute mock opera ``Bohemian Rhapsody'' - complete with a goofy choir chirping ``Mama mia, Mama mia'' - was only one example of his musical extravagance. He was even more extreme when it came to his concert performances, appearing in leather storm-trooper outfits or women's clothes and taking an arch, gay-macho stance that both challenged and poked fun at the decidedly homophobic hard-rock world.

Offstage, Mercury was known for his wild antics and the lavish gifts he bestowed upon friends. To celebrate his forty-first birthday, for instance, he flew eighty pals to an exclusive hotel on the resort isle of Ibiza, where they were treated to fireworks displays, flamenco dancers and a twenty-foot-long cake carried by waiters dressed in gold and white costumes. ``All I can remember about the whole time we were making records and hanging out was that it was like one continuous party,'' says producer Roy Thomas Baker, who worked on five Queen albums.