Media Moment: American Idol, TED, Pink: Live in Australia
Queen Related: BoRhap
I was waiting to see long it took the new season of American Idol to showcase an audition that used BoRhap. Sure enough, within the first two days of the audition, teenager Brett Loewenstern from Florida wowed the three judges with his best Freddie imitation.
While I usually don’t heap praise upon American Idol wannabes who use Queen to audition with, Brett actually got Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez singing along. Seeing these two recording artists mouth the words to BoRhap made me realize the extent to which the song has garnered respect from both fans and peers of Queen.
Has the latest season of American Idol kickstarted the Bohemian Rhapsody craze once again? For whatever reason, I’ve noticed a spate of BoRhap renditions making the rounds on the Internet. Two of them, in my opinion, are worth noting here.
A fellow QMSer sent a link to a TED.com (technology, entertainment, design) that featured a video of Jake Shimabukuro performing BoRhap on a ukulele. While he stumbled in a few places trying to keep up with the frenetic pace of the opera section, he nonetheless got a standing ovation from the Long Beach, CA crowd. A YouTube search showed me that he’s been doing that song for quite a while but this latest video seems to have earned him a wider viewership.
Finally, I came across Pink’s performance of BoRhap as part of her Live in Australia concert DVD and I must say she did an admirable job. I thought that her choice of yellow bomber jacket was apropo given the song. Her backup singers powered through the opera section very well and it was only the harder-edged parts of the song that Pink missed the mark slightly.
Her tribute to Queen here leads me to believe that she was more than happy with her involvement with the Moulin Rouge soundtrack; she co-sang the Lady Marmalade single but then The Show Must Go On also appeared on the film’s double-CD release.
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