Today I thought I would look at a famous song and see what others have made of it. “Bohemian Rhapsody” is a song by Queen. It was written by Freddie Mercury for the band’s 1975 album A Night at the Opera. 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 section and a reflective coda. “Bohemian Rhapsody” is one of the few songs to emerge from the 1970s progressivec rock movement to achieve widespread commercial success and appeal to a mainstream audience.
“Bohemian Rhapsody” topped the UK Singles chart for nine weeks and had sold more than a million copies by the end of January 1976. In 1991, after Mercury’s death, it topped the charts for another five weeks, eventually becoming the UK’s third best selling single of all time. It is also the only song to reach the Uk Christmas number one twice by the same artist.
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 on the Billboard after being used in the film Wayne’s World (1992). In 2018, the release of Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody brought the song renewed popularity and chart success worldwide. In March 2021 it was certified diamond in the US for combined digital sales and streams equal to 10 million units.
Although critical reaction was initially mixed, “Bohemian Rhapsody” has since become Queen’s most popular song and is considered one of the greatest rock songs of all time. The single was accompanied by a groundbreaking promotional video. Rolling Stone stated that its influence “cannot be overstated, practically inventing the music video seven years before MTV went on the air.” The Guardian named its music video one of the 50 key events in rock music history, helping make videos a critical tool in music marketing.
In 2004, “Bohemian Rhapsody” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. It has appeared in numerous polls of the greatest songs in popular music, including a ranking at Number 17 on Rolling Stone’s list of “the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Mercury’s vocal performance was chosen as the greatest in rock history by readers of Rolling Stone. In December 2018, it became the most streamed song from the 20th century, and it had been downloaded or streamed over 1.6 billion times.
To mark the 40th anniversary of “Bohemian Rhapsody”, the song was released on a limited edition 12″ vinyl with the original B-side “I’m In Love With My Car” in November 2015 for Record Store Day 2015. Queen also released A Night At The Odeon, Live At Hammersmith 75. This includes the first live “professionally” recorded performance of “Bohemian Rhapsody”. However, the very first recording and live performance of “Bohemian Rhapsody” was the performance on 14 November 1975 in Liverpool.
