Freddie, The Mystery

"The reason we're successful, darling? My overall charisma, of course." - Freddie Mercury

HELLO, HELLO, HELLO! Good evening, ladies and gentlemen! I'm not sure if you've noticed, but this post is written in English. Might've come up to your attention, I'll say. HOORAY! THE BLOG IS IN ENGLISH NOW, WOOO HOOO!!

Seriously now, I am starting a new phase of the blog - which is writing it in English. Personally I am way more comfortable in English than I am in Portuguese, but for those of you who prefer the latter, fret not; every now and again there will be a post in PT-BR, regarding things that matter mostly to you, Portuguese-speaking crowds. I won't be writing in a difficult manner, but please let me know how it all works out for you - that's what the comments section is for!

(Also, for those of you who do not know me personally, I get into bitch mode when I'm speaking in English. Blame all of the British culture I've been around.)

SO. I thought we could take the opportunity of this first English post to talk about something - or rather someone - that I really admire: Freddie 'Farrokh Bulsara' Mercury.


The man, the mystery, the legend. He's one particularly hard person to describe, isn't he? He had this incredible, captivating voice that rendered thousands of people singing in unison. He was an excellent songwriter, whose compositions influence the music world until today, both melodically and lyrically. He had this flamboyant stage persona that made him capable of having a crowd on the palm of his hand.

I really admire his work. Queen is, for me, one of the only bands capable of adapting to the different musical tendencies between the 1960s and 1990s. Their compositions accompanied the evolution of music throughout that age. On an early career phase, during the 1970s, they sounded more classic rock. After that, during the 80s and the introduction of the electronic beats, they sounded more pop rock-ish. They have an amazing musically diverse range of songs. Opera rock, a style basically created by them, is a mix of opera vocals in a hard rock song, like Bohemian Rhapsody. And even more than that, their concerts are known until today for the feeling that they conveyed. Their music, helped by the performance of lead man Mercury, was able to catch the crowd and transport all of them to the feeling and situation they were in when writing the hit songs. Rockabilly, Gospel sounds, Heavy Metal, progressive rock - they've been through everything.

Mercury is still today one of the most mysterious, particular celebrity personalities. He grew up in the British Protectorate Sultanate of Zanzibar, what today is Tanzania (which looks something like this). He learned to play the piano as a child. After his graduation, his family moved to England for safety reasons, and there he studied Art and Graphic Design - which later came in handy to draw the Queen crest. The most particular thing for me is that some work colleagues from before his musical career and his family both describe him as quiet and shy. I guess he could only express himself through music, given that during his celebrity years he also kept a lot of quiet about his personal life.

If we want to get technical, we can go ahead and say his voice fits the F tonality, going from low bass to high tenor. Which is the same thing as saying his voice sounded good with basically anything. "F" is an incredibly diverse tonality; and even so he managed to succeed in singing in other tones too. He understood that, and used his vocals strengths to create songs so powerful that moved millions of people.

Now, let's talk a little bit about personalities. Anyone ever heard of the Myers-Briggs personality test? Summing up, it's a (controversial) personality system and test that splits the way people see and understand the world into 16 different combination of functions. Introvertion x Extravertion, Intuition x Sensing, Thinking x Feeling and Judging x Perceiving. Each personality type has primary, secondary and tertiary functions, but the primary is always the dominant. The concept, based upon an embrionary personalities theory  by Carl Jung, was later developed into the aformentioned dichotomies by Katherine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers, during the Second World War.

And It's a quite interesting way to analyze certain celebrities - specially musicians. Let's make it a little clearer: think of our dear friend Freddie. He's been analyzed as an ENFJ personality (Extraverted, Intuition, Feeling, Judging). That means his primary function is Extraverted Feeling, which makes him very aware of the needs and desires of the people around him and of society in general. His secondary function is Introverted Intuition, which gave him, internally, a wide range of perspectives and possibilites on how to work, with him specifically, on his music and his performance (NOTE: this function is often described as a "gut feeling", a primal cog of the need of indepndence. It's the hardest to empirically describe among all of them).  That means that, all in all, he understood very well the feelings of his crowds and his own, and had an incredible capacity of dealing with all of them. On the temperaments list which relates the personality codes to Jung's own archetypes, ENFJs are The Teachers.

That gives us some insight into his actions. His legendary performances and his music reflected these personality traits. He could understand his own feelings well enough to know to what extent general crowds would respond to it. That automatically makes him both a very intelligent professional and a passionate composer/performer. And also, about how he would show so much feeling and yet maintain the silence about his personal life most of the time.

That can give us a way to greatly comprehend the music scenery today and the people who made it so. On specially a musician, these personality types affect the way they present themselves and specially, what their music says. I'd wager that certain celebrities would look a whole lot different if we shine that light on them. Oh well.

SO, did y'all like it? Did y'all hate it? Do you think my personality type is SABT (Stupid Ass BiTch)?  Feel free to comment!

"I'm a man with a one track mind, so much to do in one lifetime..." - Freddie Mercury

Music Junkie