Crazy Little Thing Called Love

"Crazy Little Thing Called Love" is a song performed by the English rock band Queen, written by singer Freddie Mercury. While it peaked at number two in the UK, it hit number one on the U.S. charts on February 23, 1980, remaining there for four consecutive weeks. It topped the charts in Australia for six weeks.

The video for the song features the Queen crest on Taylor's bass drum even though the band had stopped using the crest from their live shows many years before.

The song is written in a rockabilly style, with Freddie Mercury singing in an Elvis Presley-esque fashion. Though the singing has been attributed to Elvis, The King died in 1977, three years before the song was released on the 1980 Queen album The Game.

As reported by Mercury in Melody Maker, May 2, 1981, he composed "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" on the guitar in just five to ten minutes. Other accounts say that he wrote it while lounging in a bubble bath in the Bayerischer Hof Hotel in Munich during one of Queen's extensive Munich recording sessions. He took it to the studio shortly after writing it and presented it to bandmates Roger Taylor and John Deacon. The three of them, with their new producer 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), which may have helped create its fresh and catchy sound. The speed it took to record was due to the fact that Mercury had composed the arrangements for the other bandmates before presenting the song to the band, so all the other bandmates had to do was play. The instruments used were a Ludwig drum kit (Taylor), Fender Precision Bass (Deacon) and Martin D-18 Acoustic Guitar (Mercury).

Lead guitarist Brian May almost missed the chance to be a part of the song: by the time he arrived at the studios, they had almost finished editing it for the single release. Fortunately there was enough time for him to play the guitar solo (on a Fender Telecaster) and sing backing vocals.

Originally Brian May was opposed to the idea of playing a Fender Telecaster for this song as he said in his 1984 Star Licks video. May stated "For Crazy Little Thing Called Love they made me play this Telecaster, which I don't want to do."

While the song is rockabilly in feel, the harmonic structure demonstrates awareness of the intervening twenty-odd years — the subdominant of the subdominant (i.e., the bVII) is freely used, and the bVI-bVII-I progression (see "Lady Madonna") provides the main hook of the song.

The song contains a rare example of a band mentioning a member by name in the lyrics ("Ready Freddie"). Queen would later surpass this by mentioning all four members in their song "The Invisible Man".

The "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" single was very successful for the band, hitting number two in the UK and becoming the first U.S. number-one hit for the band in spite of Elektra Records' reluctance to release it as a single as The Game was not finished yet. There's an unconfirmed legend (commented on by Roger Taylor in the radio show In the Studio which devoted an episode to the making of The Game, and by Brian May on his website) that declares John Lennon was inspired by "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" to go back to the music business. Whether this is true or not is still unknown, but it is a fact that Lennon had listened to the band and he did try new influences on his Double Fantasy album.

B-side: "We Will Rock You" (live)
Released: October 5, 1979
Format: Vinyl record (7")
Recorded: 1979
Genre: Rockabilly, Rock 'n' roll, Rock
Length: 2:42
Label: EMI, Elektra (US)
Writer(s): Freddie Mercury
Producer: Queen and Mack

This thing called love I just cant handle it
This thing called love I must get round to it
I aint ready
Crazy little thing called love
This (this thing) called love
(called love)
It cries (like a baby)
In a cradle all night
It swings (woo woo)
It jives (woo woo)
It shakes all over like a jelly fish,
I kinda like it
Crazy little thing called love

There goes my baby
She knows how to rock n roll
She drives me crazy
She gives me hot and cold fever
Then she leaves me in a cool cool sweat

I gotta be cool relax, get hip
Get on my tracks
Take a back seat, hitch-hike
And take a long ride on my motor bike
Until Im ready
Crazy little thing called love

I gotta be cool relax, get hip
Get on my tracks
Take a back seat, hitch-hike
And take a long ride on my motor bike
Until Im ready (ready freddie)
Crazy little thing called love

This thing called love I just cant handle it
This thing called love I must get round to it
I aint ready
Crazy little thing called love