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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 Queen's lead singer Freddie Mercury, the song is a six-minute suite, 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. It is one of the few progressive rock songs of the 1970s to have proved accessible to a mainstream audience.
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 it is often regarded as the band's signature song. The promotional video is credited with furthering the development of the music video medium. It has appeared in numerous polls of the greatest songs in popular music, including a ranking at number 17 on Rolling Stone's 2021 list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time". A Rolling Stone readers' poll also ranked Mercury's vocal performance in the song as the greatest in rock history.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" topped the UK Singles Chart for nine weeks (plus another five weeks following Mercury's death in 1991) and is 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 has 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. Following the release of the 2018 biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, it became the most streamed song from the 20th century. In 2021, it was certified diamond in the US for combined digital sales/streams equal to 10 million units, and is one of the best selling songs of all time. In 2022, it was inducted into the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
It was basically three songs that I wanted to put out, and I just put the three together.
According to Mercury's friend Chris Smith (a keyboard player in Smile), Mercury first started developing "Bohemian Rhapsody" in the late 1960s; Mercury used to play parts of songs he was writing at the time on the piano, and one of his pieces, known simply as "The Cowboy Song", contained lyrics that ended up in the completed version produced years later, in 1975, specifically, "Mama ... just killed a man." Producer Roy Thomas Baker, who began working with Queen in 1972, related how Mercury once played the opening ballad section on the piano for him in Mercury's flat:
He played the beginning on the piano, then stopped and said, "And this is where the opera section comes in!" Then we went out to eat dinner.
Guitarist Brian May said the band thought that Mercury's blueprint for the song was "intriguing and original, and worthy of work". According to May, much of Queen's material was written in the studio, but this song "was all in Freddie's mind" before they started.
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 Queen's lead singer Freddie Mercury, the song is a six-minute suite, 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. It is one of the few progressive rock songs of the 1970s to have proved accessible to a mainstream audience.
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 it is often regarded as the band's signature song. The promotional video is credited with furthering the development of the music video medium. It has appeared in numerous polls of the greatest songs in popular music, including a ranking at number 17 on Rolling Stone's 2021 list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time". A Rolling Stone readers' poll also ranked Mercury's vocal performance in the song as the greatest in rock history.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" topped the UK Singles Chart for nine weeks (plus another five weeks following Mercury's death in 1991) and is 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 has 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. Following the release of the 2018 biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, it became the most streamed song from the 20th century. In 2021, it was certified diamond in the US for combined digital sales/streams equal to 10 million units, and is one of the best selling songs of all time. In 2022, it was inducted into the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
It was basically three songs that I wanted to put out, and I just put the three together.
According to Mercury's friend Chris Smith (a keyboard player in Smile), Mercury first started developing "Bohemian Rhapsody" in the late 1960s; Mercury used to play parts of songs he was writing at the time on the piano, and one of his pieces, known simply as "The Cowboy Song", contained lyrics that ended up in the completed version produced years later, in 1975, specifically, "Mama ... just killed a man." Producer Roy Thomas Baker, who began working with Queen in 1972, related how Mercury once played the opening ballad section on the piano for him in Mercury's flat:
He played the beginning on the piano, then stopped and said, "And this is where the opera section comes in!" Then we went out to eat dinner.
Guitarist Brian May said the band thought that Mercury's blueprint for the song was "intriguing and original, and worthy of work". According to May, much of Queen's material was written in the studio, but this song "was all in Freddie's mind" before they started.