Young British piano prodigy Embers Sheets blew audiences away with his street performance of Queen’s bombastic classic “Bohemian Rhapsody”.
Queen frontman Freddie Mercury’s piano playing is the cornerstone of the hit song, and the audience can’t believe their eyes when the young boy perfectly nails the intricate piano part, as you can see in the YouTube video below.
The story behind the piano wiz kid is quite a mystery. His YouTube channel name is Embers Sheets, with a handle of @pianoserd and friends and family call him Zach.
He’s from the United Kingdom and joined YouTube in March, 2019, but beyond that, very little is known. Zach’s skills don’t stop at Queen covers though, as in the video below you can hear him segue from Ludwig van Beethoven’s classical masterpiece “Moonlight Sonata” into Dr. Dre’s rap hit “Still D.R.E.”. Talk about versatility!
You can click through to see Zach’s YouTube channel, which features eight full length videos of his street performances, as well a large number of Shorts which display his playing.
Zach doesn’t shy away from showing his diverse influences and he can be seen tackling songs such as Elvis Presley’s “Unchained Melody” Piano Fantasia’s “Song for Denise” and Sheet Music Boss’s “Rush E”, as well as sharing his own original compositions.
The young man has excellent taste in music as evidenced by his selection of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”, which remains a fan favourite nearly 50 years after its release in October 1975.
“Bohemian Rhapsody” was written by late frontman Freddie Mercury and clocks in at six minutes, which makes it one of the lengthier pop hits to achieve such widespread success.
The song has an experimental structure, with many different sections with a variety of feel changes. This makes it one of few progressive rock songs which made such a huge impact on the charts internationally.
“Bohemian Rhapsody” remains Queen’s most popular song, and is currently ranked in first place on Queen’s Spotify, with over 2.1 billion streams, making it the 27th most streamed song on the entire platform.
This figure is even more impressive as “Bohemian Rhapsody” is in fact the highest ranked song of any classic artist on Spotify, as the top 26 spots are entirely made up of modern artists, such as The Weeknd, Ed Sheeran and Lewis Capaldi.
“Bohemian Rhapsody” was always destined for greatness. Back in 1976, Beach Boys mastermind Brian Wilson said the song is “the most competitive thing that’s come along in ages” and “a fulfilment and an answer to a teenage prayer—of artistic music”. The song has maintained an enduring popularity across the decades and is still discussed by fans and critics to this day.
“Bohemian Rhapsody” was the first single from Queen’s fourth album A Night at the Opera (1975). The album made Queen a major commercial force on both sides of the Atlantic, topping the UK charts for a month straight and becoming the band’s first Platinum record in the US. If you would like to see more from Embers Sheets, you can subscribe to his YouTube channel.