Another singer auditioned for the the job of lead vocals for Queen, called Marc Martel. From what I’ve seen on Youtube his voice is much closer to Freddie Mercury’s than Adam Lambert’s. I’m surprised he wasn’t chosen, but I do know that Brian May and co claimed they didn’t want ‘another Freddie’, not that I wholly buy into that. For one thing I thought they had a perfectly acceptable singer with Paul Rodgers, much like The Who soldiering on with Kenny Jones. Rodgers has a strident singing voice that would never be mistaken for Mercury’s, and so clearly was brought in specifically because he would interpret the songs in his own way and incorporate his own stagecraft.

Adam Lambert, if anything, has a stronger and more conventionally trained singing voice than Freddie did. After all it was Roger Taylor who handled a lot of the highest vocal lines live, and Freddie sometimes transposed vocal lines to sit more comfortably in his range onstage. Adam does bring a sort of schmaltzy, bratty stage school luvvie presence to the band, but for me that was/is only part of what Queen was about. I always viewed the band as being an amalgamation of hard rock, prog rock, Music hall and more overt campy theatrical leanings, whereas Adam Lambert turns the whole thing into a piece of theatrical fluff. From casual observation it would seem to me that Lambert lacks the self awareness of Freddie, and is just happy to have the best karaoke gig going.