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Bohemian Rhapsody
- HEATHER BARNES
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
"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,[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 have proved accessible to a mainstream audience.[6]
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.[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 also ranked Mercury's vocal performance in the song as the greatest in rock history.[11]
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