{"id":4357,"date":"2025-06-23T09:13:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T08:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.danijel.org\/blog\/?p=4357"},"modified":"2025-06-23T09:15:50","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T08:15:50","slug":"a-musical-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danijel.org\/blog\/a-musical-mystery\/","title":{"rendered":"A musical mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Last night, I was listening to some music on Youtube, and stumbled upon a summary of all the things Giorgio Moroder made in the &#8217;80s, which turns out to be probably a third of the greatest hits from the period, and I knew most of them from before, but now I stumbled upon one I didn&#8217;t know about:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Freddie Mercury - Love Kills Official Video\" width=\"584\" height=\"329\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GglOC5tUT_c?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The first shock was that Moroder actually did a song with Mercury &#8211; it&#8217;s not like Queen had a lack of creative talent. The second shock is that only Mercury was credited, although I was sure I can hear Brian May&#8217;s guitar there. Also, why isn&#8217;t this song more widely known, since it&#8217;s great, and&#8230; wait a minute, why does it have something that I recognise as iconic Queen sound? Because it sounds exactly like Radio Ga Ga, that&#8217;s why. What&#8217;s going on there?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">So I looked it up this morning, and it seems to be all about contract obligations and copyright. Apparently, Giorgio Moroder was doing the soundtrack for some kind of a 1980s remake of Fritz Lang&#8217;s &#8220;Metropolis&#8221;, and likely thought that &#8220;Queen&#8221; sound would go great with that, considering what they did with &#8220;Flash Gordon&#8221; a few years earlier, but that&#8217;s just my guesswork. In any case, the project was contracted by CBS, and &#8220;Queen&#8221; had a contract with EMI, so they couldn&#8217;t be credited for it, nor perform it on stage, so Mercury was credited and Moroder&#8217;s pivotal role was historically all but forgotten, as is the case with lots of his stuff, since he didn&#8217;t care much about putting himself out there.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">So, since Mercury got permission to use clips from &#8220;Metropolis&#8221; for his videos, the &#8220;Queen&#8221;, still under impression from Moroder&#8217;s synth sound, went out and made &#8220;Radio Ga Ga&#8221;, with Metropolis footage and all:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Queen - Radio Ga Ga (Official Video)\" width=\"584\" height=\"438\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/azdwsXLmrHE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">So, let&#8217;s use this opportunity to shower praise on Giovanni Giorgio Moroder, the man who invented the sound of the 1980s.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"25 Hit Songs written by Giorgio Moroder\" width=\"584\" height=\"329\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zxZOhiG3poM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last night, I was listening to some music on Youtube, and stumbled upon a summary of all the things Giorgio Moroder made in the &#8217;80s, which turns out to be probably a third of the greatest hits from the period, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.danijel.org\/blog\/a-musical-mystery\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danijel.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danijel.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danijel.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danijel.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danijel.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4357"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.danijel.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4361,"href":"https:\/\/www.danijel.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4357\/revisions\/4361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danijel.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danijel.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danijel.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}