The Real Reason Freddie Mercury Never Fixed His Teeth
Rockstars are a unique and intriguing part of our culture. It takes a lot of practice, drive, hard work, and talent in order to make it to the big time. In addition to having a great voice and musical skills galore, it also helps if you have an identifiable feature that sets you apart as well. While Mick Jagger is known for his lips and Bon Jovi had an amazing head of hair, Freddie Mercury had his teeth. In nearly every photo of him, you can see that there is definitely something different about his smile. His toothy grin became one of his most well-known trademarks, but there was more to his unusual appearance than meets the eye.
According to Denta Kay, Mercury's teeth didn't just protrude in atypical fashion just because some teeth grew in crooked or something. He actually suffered from a medical condition called mesiodens. This causes what they call supernumerary teeth, which basically means you have extra teeth in your mouth. They can occur anywhere, but Mercury's happened to manifest itself in four additional incisors behind his normal ones. These extra teeth then caused his front teeth forward because of overcrowding. Mercury's teeth were also larger than average and he also had a pretty noticeable overbite which made his condition impossible to ignore.
He believed it would change his voice
When you think about the state of his mouth, often the first question one asks is if it is something that can be fixed. The answer to that is yes. Even during the '70s , a procedure to extract the extra incisors most definitely could have been performed, as stated by Denta Kay. More impressive still is that it would have been relatively simple. The question now becomes why didn't he get them fixed? It all came down to what he believed.
There is little doubt that Freddie Mercury's voice is one of the greatest of all time. According to Mental Floss, he had a vocal range of almost four octaves. For comparison, other singers who have a four-octave range or higher are David Bowie, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, and Mariah Carey per Classic FM Obviously, he sits in good company. By 1975, Mercury and Queen had become a household name, so therefore his voice was his livelihood. Turns out that he believed the secret to his success lay in the distinct design of his mouth, including his teeth. Therefore, he never wanted to get his teeth fixed for fear of changing his vocal range, according to Ultimate Classic Rock. Though some say that Mercury was self-conscious about them, it was not enough to make him alter them. No one knows what might have happened if he did, but Freddie Mercury made himself into a musical icon anyway.