Play the Game/Killer Queen Medley

Writer: 
Freddie Mercury
Year: 
1974
Voices: 
Women's four part
Ranges: 

Tenor: F4 - F5
Lead: B flat 3 - E flat 5
Bari: B flat 3 - D5
Bass: C3 - G4

This medley of two classic Queen songs was commissioned for performance in the BinG! chorus contest. It thus needed to sound both convincingly like Queen to please all their fans in audience, and convincingly like barbershop to please the Convention crowd.

Play the Game forms the opening and closing sections of the arrangement, with Killer Queen working as a kind of fantasy sequence in the middle. As the heady and sensuous first song works up into a state of increasing ecstasy, we are invited to take on the outre persona of the Killer Queen as one way to play our game of love. The arrangement then subsides into a more reflective reprise.

Here is its gold-medal-winning performance by the Harmunichs: