I would give up all my life for just one kiss. I would surely die if you just miss me from your love. You take my breath away. That song, it's tingles down the spine, isn't it? Unexgassed, was selected by Brian May and Roger Taylor to voice Freddie Mercury for their tribute to a Queen extravaganza back in 2012. His audition has now received over 14 million YouTube views and resulted in a performance on Ellen. He is toured extensively and has performed for Celine Dionne. He is also, he was hand-picked as the voice of Freddie in the movie Bohemian Rhapsody. It is the incredible Mark Martell. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here. It's so nice to have you here. That little video then, honestly, it was tingles down the spine that song was beautiful. The desired reaction. Good. Well, it's worked. Well done. You were a singer though of your own right, long before the movie discovered that you sounded just a tiny little bit like Freddie Mercury. So, so how did it, what was life like before Freddie? I was in a band just like many musicians do. You know, the 15 passenger van pulling a trailer thing and sometimes sleeping in it overnight. Yeah, we slugged it out for almost 15 years until this Queen thing started. With that, is the voice natural nurture? Like was there some moment where someone said, how you sound like Freddie or a zero-suitant level of characterization? It's a little bit of both. I learned to sing from imitating from mimicking. I just had a natural ear from mimicking. Apparently that's a Quebec thing Celine told me one day. Name drop. Oh, here we go. There it is. I did that on purpose. It's right there for me. I grew up with the propensity to try to imitate what I heard. My first big one was George Michael and so on and so forth through the 90s. As my voice began to mature, I started to get a lot of regular comparisons to Freddie Mercury even before I knew anything more than they're probably their three biggest hits like everyone else knows. That's quite an extraordinary line as to have those. Did you actually try at the beginning when people saying, hey, you sound like Freddie Mercury to not sound like Freddie Mercury? I've tried not to sound like him. In my old band, it became a joke after a while. I would tell them, right before we go on stage, I'm like, hey guys, tonight I'm going to try to sound like Mark Martell, whatever that sounds like. I don't know. I think I even got more comparisons to Freddie that night. It's something that I'm never going to accept that I'm never going to be able to escape and I've embraced it. If you're going to be compared to someone, it may as well be someone who's considered the greatest in their field. So the audition for the Queen tribute and then of course, you're asked to perform on Ellen. Did this all just happen kind of quickly? It did. I uploaded my initial audition video for the Queen Extravaganza band in September, I believe, of 2011. And by early October, we'd been contacted by Ellen's people. And I don't know if you've ever had a video go viral before, but it's nuts. I bet. And my wife tells me that she lost her husband there for a few weeks because I was just constantly on YouTube. What are they saying? What are they saying? It's mostly good. So thankfully. Well, that's the thing. You've got all these people, all of a sudden, knowing your voices. You've got such a great one to compare it to. Were you initially a little bit reluctant to be auditioned in? Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, like I said, I had my own band and we were full time. We were making it work. You know, moderately successful. Like we even had some radio play and stuff in the United States and Canada. And I had a feeling that starting something with Queen would disrupt that. And I didn't know how much it would disrupt it. So I did hesitate, you know, I remember vividly sitting on our couch that day that I uploaded the video, sitting next to my wife with my laptop. And I was like, I can't do this. Like it not only would potentially disrupt my life, but the life of three of my best friends, you know. And then she turned to me and said, Mark, you were born for this. And I thought it was a good... Like the intern that you guys... How has life changed? It must be phenomenal. Well, it's still music. It's still a lot of music. It's playing music that people actually recognize and know. It's really a rush to go on stage and play songs that everyone knows just as well as you do. Before that, when you're in your own band, doing your own music, you know, you obviously have your core fans. But there's also a huge part of the audience that you're trying to sell your music to because they've never heard it before. But with Queen, it's just like this music that's been in the Zeitgeist for 40 years. So, and every night when you end with... We are the champions and we will rock you and it's a standing ovation and everybody feels great and goes home. Well, that's the thing. The songs... Somebody feel good songs with Queen. So tell us a little bit about that performance on Ellen. What was that like? It was really cool. She was super sweet. Just as you would imagine her when I got to meet her backstage. But it was... it was a lot like this. It was a TV studio, you know. And I just did my thing. I think she asked me two questions and it was all very much a blur and I have to even go back and watch it to remember how that all went down. What about touring with Roger Taylor from the original Queen band? Well, Roger was heavily involved. Is heavily involved with the original Queen band I was a part of called The Queen Extravaganza. He was never in the band. It is actually a full attribute band. Right. But he is at the helm. It's his kind of... his brainchild. And he's very interested. He's very hands-on. He wants to make sure it's the best tribute around. And so he's very involved. He's a great guy. Wow. Now you also are going to be... you're involved with the film Bohemian Rhapsody. Ramy Malikazee, actor who's playing Freddie Mercury. But you are doing some of the songs. How did it all come about? Yeah, well, they asked me, you know, when the movie started taking form, they asked me if I'd be a part of it. And all I can say is that I can confirm what is in the Rolling Stone. I don't know if you're aware, but Rolling Stone sort of let the cat out of the bag. That the voice of Freddie will be a mixture of Freddie Mercury, Ramy Malik, the actor and me. And that's about all I can say. Wow. I love secrets. Oh, so do I. We'll get more out of it, Ophia. You mentioned earlier you had an ennec for imitating quite early on. And it was George Michael in the 90s, who some of us would have tried to do and failed. And I was told to you obviously did OK. Is there anyone else any other secrets you can lead us in on? Well, I learned how to sing falsetto from listening to the new kids on the block. So Jordan Knight was one of my heroes growing up and I'm not ashamed to say it. Great singer. Jeff Buckley is another one of my influences, a little lesser known, but one of the best singers in my opinion, Richard Marx in the 80s. So you could give us a little right here waiting so I can just get rich and cold because I'm, you know, I'm a fan. You're a fan too. Good. He's a great songwriter. So you're here with your show, the ultimate queen celebration. Yes. Tell us a little bit about that. The ultimate queen celebration has been going for about two years now and it's, it's the ultimate queen celebration, starring Mark Martell. And I'm always there with the ultimate queen celebration. It's a greatest hit show. And it's a lot of energy. And the thing that I love about this band is that I'm able to take a little bit more liberties with the set list. And we even throw in a song or two that Queen didn't necessarily record, but we make sound as if they had. Uh-huh. So in terms of that set list, you mentioned it's a greatest hit. So just real history. Some of those ones that are really just going to make us sit up and tie a tension. Well, you know, Queen was one of those bands, one of the only bands that could fill two hours of music with all greatest hits. Yeah. So obviously you've got Bohemian rap city under pressure. Um, fat bottom girls, tire mother down the two I mentioned previously. Uh, I want to break free. It, it's a great set. You can, you know, get it in the show. Oh, so really good songs. So do you think don't stop me now? I do. That's my favorite. That is actually my favorite as well. I was going to watch it on the day, but yeah. That's one of my all time favorite. If you need a song that's going to get you up and motivated. That is the one. I've got to know, well, that was my question. What's your favorite song? Unsaid. Yeah. On some days of Sunday pressure. On some days it's love of my life, but don't stop me now. It was always at the top. Fantastic. And absolutely appreciate chatting with you and really looking forward to a performance from you later on. So thank you so much for that. My, my tell performance, the ultimate Queen celebration at Auckland's RTS Center tomorrow night. And then at the Isaac Theatre Royal in Christchurch on Sunday, you can check out ticket master and ticket tech for details. And tell you what, you don't want a missus performance. It's called you take my breath away with who the rehearsal is. It is so good coming up right after we chicken with Holly.