Song
« Bohemian Rhapsody » is a song written by the famous English group Queen. This song was released on the album «A night at the Opera » in 1975. The song is about a boy who killed someone and is deeply desperate. He tells his mother how he feels about this: terribly guilty. Indeed, he wishes he’d “never been born at all”. The title of this song («Bohemian Rhapsody ») remains a mystery to us…
Group
Queen was a band gathering Brian May (guitar), Freddie Mercury (piano and singer), John Deacon (bass) and Roger Taylor (drums). The four musicians were already quite famous, friends and working together when they decided to work on this album. This song was a blockbuster.
If we had to define this type of music, we could say that it was more or less Opera rock because there are an introduction, a kind of ballad, solo guitar, opera way of singing, hard rock...
Unfortunately, Freddie Mercury died in 1991. He was the major songwriter of the group (indeed, he wrote Bohemian Rhapsody) and their lead vocalist. Yet, Queen are still as famous as ever nowadays.
Obviously, they drew their inspiration from religious influences, opera, Galileo (physicist and astronomer) and progressive rock. Indeed, they inspired the Rock Opera and gave a different orientation to rock music.
One cannot talk about this group without mentioning their style which was really eccentric to say the least (beneath the glitz and the glitter of their androgynous costumes)... Have a look at this picture to get a glimpse of the time...
Times
As you may remember, the song itself dealt with a boy who killed someone and tells his mother. At the time, Queen stated that "Bohemian Rhapsody" was about a young man who had accidentally killed someone and, like Faust, sold his soul to the devil. On the night before his execution, he called for God in Arabic, "Bismillah", and with the help of angels, regained his soul from Shaitan.
We can’t say that this particular song -and moreover its contents- are reflecting the times… but this very song is ‘a kind of magic’, so listen and medidate!
