YouTube's FreddieMeter compares your singing to Freddie Mercury's — see how Rami Malek did
If you’ve ever wanted to know just how bad your singing voice is compared to Freddie Mercury‘s, YouTube is ready to tell you.
We kid. But YouTube really has launched a device that compares your singing to the powerful vocals of Queen’s iconic frontman. The FreddieMeter, created in partnership with The Mercury Phoenix Trust (a charity founded by Queen’s surviving members dedicated to fighting HIV/AIDS), allows you to test your vocal skills on four Queen songs — “Don’t Stop Me Now,” “We Are the Champions,” “Somebody to Love,” and of course “Bohemian Rhapsody.” You simply sing into your device’s microphone, and the site will produce an analysis of your performance, showing you how well your vocals match up with Mercury’s.
Now, that’s all well and good, you say. But how does Rami Malek, who won an Oscar for portraying Mercury in 2018’s Bohemian Rhapsody, measure up? Well, we at EW had that question too… so we decided to find out.
For our (admittedly very unscientific) test, we played this clip of Malek singing on the set of Bohemian Rhapsody for the FreddieMeter:
And how did he do? Behold the results:
Malek actually scored very well on timbre, or “how much your vocal style matches” Mercury’s; which makes sense, given he was actively imitating the singer’s voice for his performance. On pitch and melody, though, Malek did much worse, resulting in a score of only 48 percent overall. Take away his Oscar!
Granted, there are a number of factors that could have affected his score: the crowd’s screaming in the clip, audio distortion, the fact that he was performing the Live Aid version (rather than the studio version) of “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Consider this an open call for Malek to try the FreddieMeter out himself.
Related content:
