Marc Martel, a 41-year-old Canadian singer with the band Downhere, went viral in 2011 after a video of him singing the Queen’s classic 1976 hit “Somebody to Love” was posted to YouTube.
Martel’s video was an audition for Queen Extravaganza, a Queen tribute show— and let me assure you, with an audition that has garnered nearly 13M views since being posted, he won by a freakin’ landslide.
According to the Queen Extravaganza website, Martel, a Canadian, pursued music from a very young age. He learned the piano early on and would spend later years teaching himself guitar and singing duets with friends. When Martel attended college, he joined the band Downhere, which has since been the recipient of multiple Juno awards and a Dove award as well. You can hear one of their songs here:
It was while performing with Downhere that people began to notice that Martel sounded a lot like Freddie Mercury, Queen’s deceased iconic frontman.
Martel even kind of looks like Freddie Mercury, which makes watching him perform all the more mesmerizing. Here’s a photo of Freddie for reference:
On the Queen Extravaganza website, Martel is quoted as saying: “I don’t think I’ve done a show in the last five or six years where five to ten people haven’t come up to me and said, ‘Hey, anyone ever tell you that you sound like Queen?’ or ‘that guy from Queen’ or ‘Freddie Mercury’.”
“In the list of great rock singers, he is considered one of the best, if not the best, and it’s always just a huge compliment when people tell that to me.”
Martel’s talent is made even more impressive when considering the results of a recent study that demonstrated how special Freddie Mercury’s voice and singing style really were.
Using a rock singer to imitate the deceased Queen frontman’s growls and vibratos, researchers discovered that Freddie Mercury likely used subharmonics in his singing— a style where the ventricular folds vibrate along with the vocal folds.
It’s a pretty rare method, with Consequence of Sound explaining, “Most humans never speak or sing with their ventricular folds unless they’re Tuvan throat singers, so the fact that [Freddie Mercury] was probably dealing with subharmonics is pretty incredible.”
“What’s more, Mercury’s vocal cords just moved faster than other people’s. While a typical vibrato will fluctuate between 5.4 Hz and 6.9 Hz, Mercury’s was 7.04 Hz“
In light of this study, Martel’s talent is all the more impressive.
Check it out below!
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