A Little Thing Called Love 2010

[Glendora Starr]

Crazy Little Thing Called Love" is a song by the British rock band Queen. Written by Freddie Mercury in 1979, the track is included on their 1980 album The Game, and also appears on the band's compilation album Greatest Hits in 1981. The song peaked at number two in the UK Singles Chart in 1979 and became the group's first number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US in 1980,[5] remaining there for four consecutive weeks.[6][7] It topped the Australian ARIA Charts for seven weeks.[8] It was the band's final single release of the 1970s.

'Crazy Little Thing Called Love' took me five or ten minutes. I did that on the guitar, which I can't play for nuts, and in one way it was quite a good thing because I was restricted, knowing only a few chords. It's a good discipline because I simply had to write within a small framework. I couldn't work through too many chords and because of that restriction I wrote a good song, I think.

The song was written by Mercury as a tribute to his musical heroes Elvis Presley[15] and Cliff Richard. Roger Taylor added in an interview that Mercury wrote it in just 10 minutes while lounging in a bath in the Bayerischer Hof Hotel in Munich during one of their extensive Munich recording sessions, which was later confirmed by Mercury himself.[16] Mercury took it to the studio shortly after writing it and presented it to Taylor and John Deacon.[9][17] The three of them, with their then new producer Reinhold Mack, recorded it at Musicland Studios in Munich. The entire song was reportedly recorded in less than half an hour (although Mack says it was six hours).[18]

Having written "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" on guitar and played an acoustic rhythm guitar on the record, for the first time ever Mercury played guitar in concerts, for example at Live Aid at Wembley Stadium, London in 1985.[9][19] Billboard described Brian May's guitar playing as being "stunning in its simplicity".[20] Cash Box called it a "hip shakin' rockabilly romp" and an "upbeat tune".[21] Record World said that the band "does a superb job of capturing the spirit and sound of the late '50s be-bop rock'n'roll".[22]

The music video for the song was filmed at Trillion Studios on 21 September 1979 and directed by Dennis De Vallance involving four dancers and a floor of hands. An alternate version was included on the Days of Our Lives DVD and Blu-ray releases.

Whenever the song was played live, the band added a solid rock ending that extended the under-three-minute track to over five minutes, with May and Mercury providing additional guitars. An example of this is on the CD/DVD Set Live at Wembley '86, where the song continues for five minutes.

The "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" single hit number two in the UK Singles Chart in 1979, and became the first US number-one hit for the band, topping the Billboard Hot 100 for four weeks. It was knocked out of the top spot on this chart by Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall, Part II".[6][7] The song also topped the Australian ARIA charts for seven consecutive weeks from 1 March to 12 April 1980.[8] The UK release had "We Will Rock You (live)" as the b-side and America, Australia, Canada had "Spread Your Wings (live)".

Although Mercury played an acoustic-electric twelve-string Ovation Pacemaker 1615 guitar and later on an electric six-string Fender Telecaster (both owned by May) live, he recorded the studio version of the song using a six-string acoustic with external mics. Mercury also played the original guitar solo on a version which has been lost.[24]

American country music singer Dwight Yoakam included a cover of the song on his 1999 album Last Chance for a Thousand Years: Dwight Yoakam's Greatest Hits from the 90's.[60] Yoakam's version was released as a single. It debuted at number 65 on the US Billboard "Hot Country Singles & Tracks" chart for the week of 1 May 1999, and peaked at number 12 on the US country singles charts that year. It was also used in a television commercial for clothing retailer Gap at the time of the album's release. The music video was directed by Yoakam. This version appears in the movie The Break-Up (2006), starring Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston.

I actually prefer the self effacing bit of that, damning himself for one of the things that gave his music such depth. Much nicer than showing off about how quickly you can bash out a number one hit (in the US, only number 2 in the UK).

The breakdown is great though, especially hilarious in the video, where the handclaps emerge from underneath the catwalk. The on the nose-ness of the flattened boogie woogie bass is emphasised as the accompaniment kicks back in.

Queen: An Exploded Diagram is me having big and little thoughts about every Queen song in chronological order. If you want to support me, making it more financially viable and easier to explain to people at parties, please back my patreon.

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I eavesdropped for the next couple minutes of their conversation, and ice cream was not discussed again. With that, I got up stealthily and asked the waiter to send the lovebirds two whisky ice creams on me. We continued with our meal and conversation.

Witnessing that lifelong love and friendship was everything. I had a moment of clarity, that I would never do anything again that might get in the way of me getting that for myself when I was old and grey.

The group was plotting its next move following the modest success of 1978's Jazz. While the album was far from a disaster, it failed to reached the lofty sales heights set by 1977's News of the World.

"We heard that there was this great studio called Musicland in Munich, and we got into this rather indulgent way of just bowling into the studio with no ideas, or very few ideas, and just doing it from scratch," guitarist Brian May said in the band's Days of Our Lives documentary.

"The first thing we did was 'Crazy Little Thing ... '," drummer Roger Taylor recalled in the documentary, where he also confirmed the long-held theory that Mercury wrote the song while in the bath at the Bayerischer Hof Hotel in Munich.

Reinhold Mack, the engineer who worked on what would become the group's eighth album, The Game, recalled having everything ready to go in a matter of minutes, and laughed when he noted that Mercury told him they should record the song as quickly as possible, otherwise May would "make things take a little longer."

In discussing the song with Absolute Radio in 2011, May said the song was "Freddie's tribute to Elvis [Presley], in a way. He was very fond of Elvis and of Cliff [Richard]. Freddie wrote it very quickly, rushed in and put it down with the boys. By the time I got there, it was almost done. The sounds Mack managed to get were very elemental, real ambient sounds made it sound big. Everything about it is original rock 'n' roll sounding."

Helping ensure they captured the '50s spirit embedded in the song, Mack convinced May to step out of his comfort zone and perform a guitar solo with a Fender Telecaster instead of his usual instrument, the Red Special.

Not only was May being pushed out of his comfort zone with the song, Mercury was also headed into new territory with the track after it was completed. He may have known only a few chords on the guitar, but the singer ended up playing rhythm guitar on the album and during live performances.

Fans couldn't have cared less about Mercury's limited ability on the guitar: Released in the U.K. on Oct. 5, 1979 and then in the U.S. that December, "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" shot to the top of the American charts on Feb. 23, 1980, reaching No. 1 simultaneously in the pages of Billboard, Record World and Cashbox. "We were still making the record [The Game] and were out in Munich, and somebody came up and said ["Crazy Little Thing Called Love"] had gone to No. 1 in America," Taylor recalled.

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