Bohemian Rhapsody
"Bohemian Rhapsody" is a song by the British rock band Queen, released as the lead single from their fourth studio album, A Night at the Opera (1975). Written by lead singer Freddie Mercury, the song is a six-minute suite,[4] notable for its lack of a refraining chorus and consisting of several sections: an intro, a ballad segment, an operatic passage, a hard rock part and a reflective coda.[5] It is one of the few progressive rock songs of the 1970s to achieve widespread acclaim and commercial success and appeal to a mainstream audience.[6]
For other uses, see Bohemian Rhapsody (disambiguation)."Bohemian Rhapsody"
31 October 1975
- Rockfield, Monmouthshire
- Roundhouse, London
- Sarm, London
- Scorpio Sound, London
- Wessex Sound, London
5:55
- Roy Thomas Baker
- Queen
Mercury referred to "Bohemian Rhapsody" as a "mock opera" that resulted from the combination of three songs he had written. It was recorded by Queen and co-producer Roy Thomas Baker at five studios between August and September 1975. Due to recording logistics of the era, the band had to bounce the tracks across eight generations of 24-track tape, meaning that they required nearly 200 tracks for overdubs. The song parodies elements of opera with bombastic choruses, sarcastic recitative, and distorted Italian operatic phrases. Lyrical references include Scaramouche, the fandango, Galileo Galilei, Figaro, and Beelzebub, with cries of "Bismillah!"
Although critical reaction was initially mixed, retrospective reviews have acclaimed "Bohemian Rhapsody" as one of the greatest songs of all time and is often regarded as the band's signature song. The promotional video is credited with furthering the development of the music video medium.[7][8] It has appeared in numerous polls of the greatest songs in popular music,[9] including a ranking at number 17 on Rolling Stone's 2021 list of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time”.[10] A Rolling Stone readers' poll ranked Mercury's vocal performance as the greatest in rock history.[11]
"Bohemian Rhapsody" topped the UK Singles Chart for nine weeks (plus another five weeks following Mercury's death in 1991) and remains the UK's third best-selling single of all time. It also topped the charts in countries including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and the Netherlands, and sold over six million copies worldwide. In the United States, the song peaked at number nine in 1976, but reached a new peak of number two after appearing in the 1992 film Wayne's World. In 2004, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.[12] Following the release of the 2018 biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, it became the most streamed song from the 20th century.[13] In 2021, it was certified Diamond in the US for combined digital sales and streams equal to 10 million units.
Critical reception
Although the song has become one of the most revered in popular music history,[62] the initial critical reaction was mixed. The UK music papers reacted with bemusement, recognising that the song was original and technically accomplished, but they mostly remained indifferent. Pete Erskine of NME observed that, "It'll be interesting to see whether it'll be played in its entirety on the radio. It's performed extremely well, but more in terms of production than anything else... Someone somewhere has decided that the boys' next release must sound 'epic'. And it does. They sound extremely self-important."[63]
Allan Jones of Melody Maker was unimpressed, describing the song as "a superficially impressive pastiche of incongruous musical styles" and that Queen "contrived to approximate the demented fury of the Balham Amateur Operatic Society performing The Pirates of Penzance... 'Bohemian Rhapsody' is full of drama, passion and romance and sounds rather like one of those mini-opera affairs that Pete Townsend [sic] used to tack on to the end of Who albums", before concluding, "The significance of the composition eludes me totally, though I must admit to finding it horrifically fascinating. It's likely to be a hit of enormous proportions despite its length."[64] Ray Fox-Cumming of Record Mirror was also left unmoved, saying, "It has no immediate selling point whatsoever: among its many parts. there's scarcely a shred of a tune and certainly no one line to latch onto. There's no denying that it's devilishly clever, encompassing everything from bits of operatic harmonies to snatches that sound like Sparks and David Cassidy, but, in the end the whole adds up to less than the sum of its parts." He did, however, say that it was "unthinkable" that it wouldn't be a hit.[65] The most positive review came from Sounds, which called it "impossibly disjointed and complex, but a dazzlingly clever epic from the fevered mind of Freddie Mercury".[66] Cash Box called it "a softly sung ode to the prospect of moving on from staid ways" with "good singing" and "good production."[67] Record World called it "a majestic vocal performance that takes on operatic proportions."[68]
Source:[17]