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Watch Queen and Adam Lambert blast through Led Zep’s Whole Lotta Love

It’s the only non-Queen song the band have performed on their current tour

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Queen and Adam Lambert took on the Led Zeppelin classic Whole Lotta Love this Monday (10 February) in Dunedin, New Zealand. You can watch the performance above.

The band’s current Rhapsody tour has seen a varying setlist – but Whole Lotta Love is the only cover the band has played across the dates.

While the cover might seem like a slightly odd choice to include, as good as the song is, it’s got an interesting place in the history of Queen and Adam Lambert – keyboardist Spike Edney caught Lambert performing the song on American Idol, and made the decision to hire him off the back of his acapella take on Bohemian Rhapsody. Edney told Rolling Stone: ‘I went in to refill my martini and I just caught the last minute of [Lambert] singing Whole Lotta Love. When he got to the very end I thought, ‘Here we go. Here’s where it counts.’ He sang the final cadence and just flew through it. It was effortless. I thought, ‘Wow. That takes some singing chops to be able to sing it with that kind of confidence.’ Then I googled him and the first thing I saw was him singing Bohemian Rhapsody acappella at his audition. I sent off an email saying, ‘I found a live one.’”

He also noted that a perfect impersonation wasn’t what Queen were looking for in a new vocalists, saying: “The thing is Adam doesn’t sound like Freddie, but he’s a fabulous singer and people have now put that to one side and are saying, “OK, he’s not Freddie, doesn’t sound like Freddie, doesn’t look like Freddie, but he’s bloody brilliant at what he does.”

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