Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen

Bohemian Rhapsody was written by Freddie Mercury in 1975, the music is complex, it was groundbreaking at the time and there´s a great mystery to the lyrics. No one knows what the song is really about. Freddie Mercury didn’t like to talk about his creating process, and after he passed away, the rest of the band said none of them like to tell people what their songs are about. "The thing about a great song is you relate it to your own personal experiences." 

The song doesn’t have regular verses and a chorus like most songs, it has three parts in which the stile changes from ballad to opera and then into heavy rock. The video is very special and important to audiovisual history. Back in the 1970´s music videos were called “promotional videos”, and very few bands made them. The special effects in the video where made during filming, using special lenses and lights, The band decided to make the video to avoid appearing “live” on Top of The Pops, an important TV show where it was compulsory to use playback, and they hated miming. They helped set the trend for what we know today as music videos.

There are a lot of accepted theories for what the lyrics mean. Many people say the song is about Mr. Mercury coming to terms with his sexual orientation.  I believe it’s a story about a man who is indifferent to the world we live in, he doesn’t care about anyone. He kills another man and is sentenced to death. Only after facing his own mortality does he realize he wants to live. He is judge by angels and demons, both fighting over his soul. In the end he manages to save himself. He gets more time to redeem his soul and avoid going to hell, but unfortunately he goes back to being his old self, unwilling to connect to the world around him, wasting his second chance.

I think is a reflection of how numb and indifferent we can be today. We take everything for granted, barely caring about our own lives, until something truly tragic happens, like going through a near death experience, the death of a loved one, or a natural disaster were millions die, then we want to change and help others, but in a few weeks we´ll forget about it and go back to being indifferent.

If giving this message was Queen´s intention, we´ll never know, but it is a good theory, one that we need to keep in mind. By being aware of our mistakes, we can avoid repeating them in the future.

Paulina Wall.