"The Great Pretender" is a popular song recorded by The Platters, with Tony Williams on lead vocals, and released as a single on November 3, 1955. The words and music were created by Buck Ram, the Platters' manager and producer who was a successful songwriter before moving into producing and management. "The Great Pretender" reached the number one position on both the R&B and pop charts in 1956. It also reached the UK charts peaking at number 5.
Buck Ram reports that he wrote the song in about 20 minutes in the washroom of the Flamingo Hotel in order to have a song to follow up the success of "Only You (And You Alone)". Stan Freberg parodied this version.
In 2004, the song was voted 360th greatest song of all time by Rolling Stone. Plas Johnson played tenor saxophone.
The song was repopularized in 1987 by Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of the rock band Queen. Mercury's version reached number four on the UK Singles Chart.
Mercury's music video for the song became one of the most well-known of his career. It featured Mercury in many of his Queen guises through video medium over the years, including visual re-takes of "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", "It's a Hard Life", "I Want to Break Free", "Bohemian Rhapsody", and "I Was Born to Love You". It was directed by David Mallet in February 1987, and also featured fellow Queen member Roger Taylor and Peter Straker (a friend of Freddie's) in drag. Mercury had shaved off his moustache, which had been his trademark feature since 1980. An extended video version appears on the video single on VHS, Freddie Mercury The Video Collection on VHS and DVD and Lover of Life, Singer of Songs on DVD.
The song has been re-released in many compilations including Lover of Life, Singer of Songs, on Queen's Greatest Hits III album, and more recently on "Messenger of the Gods: The Singles Collection by Freddie Mercury".
In one of his last videotaped interviews in spring of 1987, Mercury explained that the song was particularly fitting for the way he saw his career and being on stage.
Freddie Mercury - lead and backing vocals
Mike Moran - piano, keyboards
Harold Fisher - drums
Alan Jones - bass guitar
George Harrison led Phil Spector into cutting a simple acoustic version of it in 1970-71 while in the studio jamming on other songs, it was pressed onto acetate_disc but never officially released.
There is a 1969 cover version by Gene Pitney; this version is clearly the model that Freddie Mercury used for his much later version, although demos of Mercury's 1987 song sound like the original Platters take.
It was covered in 1984 by Dolly Parton, who made it the title song of an album of covers from the 1950s and 1960s (The Great Pretender)
Sam Cooke.
Kathy Young with the Innocents covered the song in 1961 as the B-side to their single, "Baby Oh Baby".
Stan Freberg made a parody version in 1956.
Pat Boone covered it on his Moody River album in 1961.
Dan McCafferty covered it on Dan McCafferty album in 1975
The Righteous Brothers
Gene Summers included it on his 1997 album The Ultimate School of Rock & Roll issued on Crystal Clear Sound Records.
The Band covered it on Moondog Matinee, an album of covers.
Perhaps most radically, it was tackled by Lester Bowie in 1981 and extended to nearly seventeen minutes of improvisation on his album of the same name.
It was covered in the UK by Jimmy Parkinson, an Australian vocalist. It entered the Top 20 on 3 March 1956, six months ahead of the Platters' version; Parkinson's hit peaked at No 9 and remained in the Top 20 for 10 weeks.
Jackie Riggs, a US doowop singer also covered it in March 1956
George Faith covered the song on his album Reggae Got Soul.
The Statler Brothers covered the song on their final live CD.
Country singer Roy Clark performed a comedy routine in which he sings the song with comic sound effects, odd guitar strokes and occasional segues into other, different songs.
Old and in the Way released a bluegrass version of the song on the album That High Lonesome Sound (1973).
Roy Orbison for his 1961 Crying album
In 1999, National Public Radio included the song in the "NPR 100", in which NPR's music editors sought to compile the one hundred most important American musical works of the 20th century.
The song inspired the naming of Chrissie Hynde's band, Pretenders.
The song played an important part in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s film The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972).
The song was featured in the 2003 film Evil.
In the 1973 film American Graffiti, Richard Dreyfuss' character sings along to the song while he stares into the window of an appliance store.
In the novel "Beautiful Losers" by the Canadian songwriter, folk-singer and poet Leonard Cohen, he describes the song as "a song which was to change the popular music of our day".
The song can be heard in the video game BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea
Freddie Mercury's version can be heard in Night and the City (1992).
The song features in the 1990 film ′Paper Mask′, starring Paul McGann and Amanda Donohue.
The song is featured in Empire Season 1, Episode 08
