Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody (1975)
We’d never heard its like before nor have we since.
It’s not only uncoupled from anything Freddy, Brian, John and Roger ever did; it’s separated completely from anything anyone would, had or will ever contribute to the anthology of recorded popular music, anywhere, anytime, ever.
It’s unhinged.
Forget the operatics for the moment (and only for the moment). This… this… thing of four separate musical ventures krazyglued together without apology or scruple just couldn’t possibly have happened. The only vague attempt to lend any cohesion at all to its form is the very last”Nothing really matters…/Any way the wind blows” at the veryveryvery end of the ride. And by that time, we’ve all dropped our beer bottles and stood agape, wordless, dumb, glassy-eyed. I mean, I guess you gotta end the song somehow, right?
The a capella chorus in the middle of this… this… thing is a pipe bomb of musical satire unique in the entire history of music – classical, popular, folk, liturgical or Monty Python. What’s truly unbelievable is that it’s not lifted or borrowed from anything. It was an entirely original composition.
Andanotherthing. This… this… thing was unleashed on the world in the form of a music video. In 1975. That’s like Mozart having uploaded Cosi Fan Tutte to YouTube.
If you have any doubt as to its musical radioactivity, play the video below. A crowd of over 60,000 snotnosedpunks attending a Green Day concert – maybe 59,000 of whom weren’t even born in or before 1975 – sung along with this… this… thing wire to wire, word for word, in all of its soprano-alto-tenor-bass glory. I cannot for the life of me think of any work of art in any medium that has had this kind of cross-era, cross-cultural stickiness.
Consider this, too: this… this… thing made movie actors out of Dana Carvey and Mike Myers.
There’s just nothing more to say.
