Friday October 2, 2020 “Bohemian Rhapsody” Queen
Not one of my favorite songs but not because it isn’t a great tune, because it is, but because the radio has beaten it to death by overplaying it and turned it more into an annoyance than the amazing diversion that it was when it was originally released.
Thanks to the long, successful history of this band, one of the few bands that has survived the years with its original members (excepting of course the late Freddie Mercury) and the recent movie, there is little that we don’t know about Queen.
This remarkable song truly conforms to its rhapsody theme as a ‘one-movement work that is episodic yet integrated, free-flowing in structure, featuring a range of highly contrasted moods, colour, and tonality’. But what does it all mean?
The band when asked has always provided somewhat obscure meanings which eventually gets to the ‘we would leave the interpretation to the listener’ although there are several suggestions that have been made not the least of which is Freddie dealing with his sexuality.
The song has been in the top forty in three different decades, an accomplishment by only Cher and Prince suggesting that it may be important from a hit perspective to have a single name.
There are many lines in this song that are open to interpretation but the one we will go with this today: “Spare him his life for this one cup of tea.”
Stay safe and well...and maybe Queen had such longevity because they are a great band with a legendary frontman.
