Queen – Somebody To Love

This may be my favorite Queen song. I loved to play this in my car when I was a teen with a stereo that could blow your hair back.

This song is sung with a gospel feel, with the voices of Freddie Mercury, Brian May, and Roger Taylor multitracked to sound like a choir. According to Brian May, the gospel sound was inspired by the music of Aretha Franklin.

Freddie Mercury wrote Somebody To Love. In interviews Freddie has said the lyrics reflect a man calling out to God, asking why he works so hard, but can’t find love. At the end of the song, he finds hope and decides he will not accept defeat

The song peaked at #13 in the Billboard 100, #2 in the UK, and #5 in Canada in 1977. The song was on the album A Day At The Races.

The band was super talented and it wasn’t just Freddie’s voice that made it… All the members contributed. Brian May’s guitar playing and sound was just as much part of Queen. John Deacon’s bass playing and songwriting that produced some of their big hits. Roger Taylor who is an excellent drummer also wrote some of their bigger songs.

From Songfacts

.Peter Hince, the head of Queen’s road crew, recalled to Mojo magazine September 2009 that “among the road crew there were songs you liked and songs you didn’t like.” He added that this was, “always one of Queen’s best. The studio version was very polished, but on-stage there was so much more guts to it.”

Hince recalled to Mojo the video was “filmed at Wessex Studios while they were making the A Day at the Races album.” He added: “Aesthetically, you had to have all four around the microphone, but John (Deacon) didn’t sing on the records. By his own admission he didn’t have the voice. He did sing on-stage but the crew always knew to keep the fader very low.”

Several bootleg recordings and live videos exist where evidently John’s mic was not turned down, and it becomes painfully obvious that the above statement is true – one particular live performance of “In The Lap Of The Gods” is wince-inducing!

In October 2009 a remake by the cast of the Fox TV musical comedy Glee returned this song to #28 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #26 on the UK singles chart. Their version was featured in the episode “The Rhodes Not Taken.”

Frank Turner covered this for the B-side to his vinyl release of “I Still Believe” in 2011.

The Voice contestant Jordan Smith’s rendition took the song back into the upper reaches of the Hot 100. The week after his performance of the song on the December 7, 2015 episode of the singing competition, Smith’s version debuted at #21 on the chart.

This was used in a commercial for the Honda Ridgeline that debuted during the 2016 Super Bowl. In the spot, a flock of sheep sing this song, having heard it when they were transported in a Ridgeline with a truck-bed audio system, which we’re sure is quite handy for teaching songs to sheep.

Somebody To Love

Each morning I get up I die a little
Can barely stand on my feet (take a look at yourself)
Take a look in the mirror and cry
Lord, what you’re doing to me
I have spent all my years in believing you
But I just can’t get no relief, Lord
Somebody uh (somebody) somebody (somebody)
Can anybody find me somebody to love?

I work (he works hard) hard every day of my life
I work ’til I ache my bones
At the end (at the end of the day) I take home my hard earned pay all on my own
I go down on my knees
And I start to pray (praise the Lord)
‘Til the tears run down from my eyes
Lord, somebody uh (somebody) somebody (somebody)
Can anybody find me somebody to love?

(He works hard) everyday (everyday)
I try and I try and I try
But everybody wants to put me down
They say I’m goin’ crazy
They say I got a lot of water in my brain
I got no common sense
I got nobody left to believe
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Oh, Lord
Somebody uh (somebody) somebody (somebody)
Can anybody find me somebody to love?

(Can anybody find me somebody to love?)
Got no feel, I got no rhythm
I just keep losing my beat
I’m alright, I’m alright (he’s alright)
I ain’t gonna face no defeat
I just gotta get out of this prison cell
Someday I’m gonna be free, Lord

Find me somebody to love
Find me somebody to love
Find me somebody to love
Find me somebody to love
Find me somebody to love
Find me somebody to love
Find me somebody to love
Find me somebody to love
Find me somebody to love
Somebody (somebody) somebody (somebody)
Somebody find me, somebody find me somebody to love
Can anybody find me
Somebody to come on, love, yeah

Find me somebody to love
Find me somebody to love
Find me somebody, somebody, somebody to love (find me somebody to love)
Find me, find me, find me, find me uh somebody to love
Find me somebody to love
Find me somebody to love (anybody, anywhere)
Somebody, somebody to love yeah yeah oh (find me somebody to love)

Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball fan, old movie and tv show fan... and a songwriter, bass and guitar player.

35 thoughts on “Queen – Somebody To Love”

  1. You cannot go wrong with any of that Queen stuff from back than Max. My fav Queen album and entry point into there music was The Game.
    Such a brilliant album one of my all time fav’s.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

      1. I got out of my comfort zone of KISS/Priest/Cheap Trick and New England when I first heard The Game.
        Silly little hard rock boy I was at the time…

        Liked by 1 person

      2. LOL…. That makes sense Deke when you think about it. Queen had the Beatle type melodies and harmonies and it had the hard rock side also…it melded the two worlds a bit…into something different than either. Cheap Trick did it also but not to that giant symphony of voices effect.

        Liked by 1 person

      3. True as at times you can hear The Beatles mark on Cheap Trick so much so that a ways back Cheap Trick played the whole Sgt Peppers album front to back and released it.

        Liked by 1 person

      4. I always told people around the time of “If You Want My Love”…that is what the eighties Beatles would sound like…that one song.

        Liked by 1 person

  2. It’s a great song for sure. On You Tube, check out George Michael doing this song in rehearsal. Although nobody does it like Freddy, it’s pretty amazing.

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

  3. On the 35th anniversary of their classic concert appearance at Live Aid too! A great song. I like it still. I’ve read a lot feel its a second-rate imitation of “Bohemian Rhapsody” but even if there are similarities, I think it stands up well on its own.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. You know I didn’t know that last night… If I would have have I would have posted Radio Gaga which is incredible in that concert.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

    1. They were…for me their secret weapon so to speak was John Deacon who didn’t write a lot of songs but when he did they were hits.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  7. Great song! While perhaps overexposed, my favorite Queen tune remains Bohemian Rhapsody.

    To me in some ways Queen are a bit comparable to ELO – many massively produced, at times somewhat weird, yet brilliant and catchy tunes for the most part. Plus, Freddie Mercury truly was a killer vocalist and a hell of a live performer. Unfortunately, I’ve only seen footage and never went to one of their shows. I imagine seeing them live must have been something else!

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. Yea I never got to see them either. My favorite of the band is Brian May…
      Every guitar solo he does you can hum it! He has so much melody in his playing…plus his sound is really cool with that guitar.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      2. That band is smart…all of them have degrees but yea…Brian is on another level. Check out his guitar gear one day if you have time…it’s interesting.

        Liked by 1 person

      4. Him and his dad build that red guitar when he was a kid and that is almost the only one he has ever played.
        He did get some copys made of it which is pretty cool.

        Liked by 1 person

    1. Oh you mean John Deacon? Yea I don’t think he added to many vocals.
      He was a secret weapon though…He rarely wrote songs…BUT when he did… Your My Best Friend, Another One Bites the Dust, and I Want to Break Free…so when he was on…he was on.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

    1. I loved driving in sketchy parts of towns in the 80s and playing Bohemian Rhapsody loud as hell…and this one.

      Like

      Reply

  10. Yeah, Queen’s pretty good. My favorite song from them is, believe it or not, “Killer Queen” . Whenever my friend gets cheated on, I lament “She’s a killer queen; gunpowder, guillotine, dynamite with a laser beam”. Ah, the joys music brings.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Please log in using one of these methods to post your comment:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: