Behind the songs: Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody

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Born from the crazy idea of ​​Freddie Mercury, Bohemian Rhapsody was released by Queen on 10/31/1975 and it is a song that everyone at least once in their life has hummed or sang at the top of their lungs. 

Bohemian Rhapsody for me is the definitive song, if I had to choose only one song to describe the music, it would probably be this one, I always thought that. Well, If you don't fully understand his greatness, think about his age.

Despite the 40 years played, Bohemian Rhapsody remains a very current song that embraces a lot of musical styles: rock ballad, pop excerpts, opera (the title of the album is A night at the opera) and hard rock as well. Pianos, acapella parts, heavy guitars... In less than 6 minutes Queen do what they want and it's hard to tell which part of the song is the most successful: every single second is absolutely perfect, including Brian May's magnificent guitar solo, one of the most famous and recognizable in history.

The band will show us throughout their career that they are always credible across different styles and genres, that's why I consider Mercury, May, Taylor and Deacon's band to be one of the best ever. They started with hard rock, then rock, then pop, pop-dance (unfortunately, with Hot space) and then returned to pop and ended up with rock again.

Easy to record it now with computers and with thousands of tracks available, a little more complicated to record and overlap something like 180 voices on tapes.
At the time there was absolutely no way to pitch a 6-minute single on the radio, but that taboo was broken by a DJ friend of Freddie Mercury who managed to get a copy of the song (for personal use, he said) pass it continuously in its broadcast. Given the success, the single was launched and received platinum status.

Queen was the band I was "born" with, musically. You know when you are practically a child and you listen to the stuff that is proposed to you on the radio? Here, Queen were the first ones I "chose" in my life. The first time in a music store (alone) was to purchase the double cassette of Live at Wembley. I was about 11 and Freddie Mercury had recently left us. Then the Freddie Mercury tribute happened with the personal discovery of Guns n' Roses and Metallica and from here the story begins...

Listen to this masterpiece. Chapeau.

Giovanni Gagliano

Passionate about music I wrote my first article for "Given To Rock" in 2012, reaching now 30K global followers. I am also a musician, gigging around London.

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