Somewhere in The Great Beyond, Lennon and Cobain are saying WTF to each other

Michael should have been offered the permanent job on the spot. Would have spared us all Queen with Paul Rodgers and Adam Lambert.

As RJ noted, another great pairing from that show is Bohemian Rhapsody by Elton John and Axl Rose. The crowd reaction when Rose bursts onto the stage is a legitimate "chills" moment.

Occurs at about the 3:15 mark:

 

And I thought this was awful, and a great contrast to appreciate how great George Michael was. They skipped the entire beginning of the song, and seemed to play old Queen recordings in the middle, and even with all of that cover Elton John couldn't hit any of the notes and brought nothing to the table (and I'm generally a fan). Axl Rose was good, because they asked him to come out and do 45 seconds of Axl Rose - those are the only seconds of the song he could even fake.

Freddie Mercury had such a huge voice, and all of those songs were written for him. It takes someone like Michael, who can hit the notes effortlessly to take his place. A bunch of years back we had a "greatest voices" thread and they were two of my candidates.

 

Last night:

 

Completely agree. Especially since at the time (1992) few were bigger rock stars than Axl.

Michael was probably too big at the time to accept the role as Mercury's replacement. Obviously, that's not the case anymore.

 

Axl's version of "We Will Rock You" version is great and there are only a few singers ever than can hit the notes that Mercury can, so he's tough to replace on some of Queen's more vocal tracks.

 

Yeah, I was surprised Michael didn't go for all the high notes on "Somebody to Love," since the listener pretty much expects them on that song. He certainly showed the range for it, so I wanted to hear that during a tribute to Mercury. Nice job anyway.

I had Mercury and Robert Plant as my choices for the best rock voices.
Both had great range and were clear as a bell. And Mercury was just incredible.

 

There were a shit-ton of singers taking Freddie's place at that concert, and shockingly, only one (Paul Young on Radio Gaga) was woefully out of his depth.

 

That would probably be my top two as well. There has been a lot of speculation that the biggest reason why Plant won't reunite with Zeppelin is that he doesn't want people to see him not be able to hit the notes he used to. I've seen him in concert twice, once as a solo act where I think he only did two Zeppelin songs and with Page in 1995 and they both looked pretty old back then doing a set that wasn't that aggressive vocally.

 

In 1992, I saw GNR in concert and Axl sang Elton John's "The One" a cappella and it was one of the most amazing things I've seen at a concert. He sang it right after Sweet Child O'Mine, so they crowd went from going ballistic to 50,000 in stunned silence in a matter of seconds. So, while he may not be Mercury or Plant, Axl had more than his share of vocal skills.