Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen

Bohemian Rhapsody is a song by the British rock band Queen and it’s written by Freddie Mercury who is the lead singer. The song consists of six sections: an intro, a ballade, a guitar solo, an opera, hard rock and an outro. The song changes a lot in its style, its tone and its tempo, which is very unusual for rock music. Therefore it’s one of the most known songs even today. After Freddie Mercury’s death in 1991 it became the number one on the charts for five weeks.

The intro
The song starts with a cappella harmonies and describes confusion between reality and fantasy. When the piano starts Freddie Mercury starts singing “easy come, easy go, little high, little low” which embraces the dreamy atmosphere. By the end of the intro the famous cross handed piano starts in the key of Bb.

The ballade
The lyrics starts with a guy who’s telling his mom that killed a man with a gun which he truly regrets and by doing so he’s ruined his life. He tells her to move on as if nothing really matters and perhaps he should take charge of his own life. When he mentions that it’s time for him to face to truth and he doesn’t want to die it’s almost as if someone else is going to be responsible for his life. He’s coming clean with the things he’s done in the past. In this section, where he confesses, the music has a kind of sad tune and we can feel how depressed he is. The piano still continues the same pattern throughout the first stanza but with some small changes.
Disregarding the lyrics, one can easily hear Freddie Mercury’s voice getting louder and more desperate as he channels the emotions of the song. A the song continues to the second stanza we are told about how tired and devastated he is, and he is saying goodbye to the world, to his friends and everyone who actually cares about him and he admits “I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all”. It’s here the guitar solo starts.

The Guitar solo
Even though the guitar solo is primary focus point, the rest of band can’t be ignored. If you listen to how well they are synchronized. This is the time where he realizes what he has done. His mistake has now finally come down on top of him. He’s hit rock bottom.

The opera
After the guitar solo, the opera part comes. It starts off with an A-major chord which makes it a bit less serious especially when we just heard about the killing. But the interesting part about it is that the lyrics remain tied to the sad subject of the “poor boy” we first heard about in the intro. Suddenly the name Galileo is repeated several times at various complimentary pitches. The aim here is to portray the operatic part of the main character’s story. The ‘courtroom trial’ will decide his fate, but he himself has no say in its outcome.
“Galileo” is in the style of questions and answers. Freddie Mercury sings quietly and humbly “I’m just a poor boy nobody loves me” which is immediately followed by a choir almost yelling back “He’s just a poor boy from a poor family. Spare him his life from this monstrosity”. The part ‘let me go’ and ‘we will not let you go’ becomes more rapid and desperate, with the dynamics now all over the place. Right after this part comes hard rock part.

Hard Rock
The opera section leads us into an aggressive hard rock musical interlude with a guitar riff written by Freddie Mercury. His vocal is double-tracked and the way he sings is very different from in the ballad part: emotional, angry and also little urgent. Three ascending guitar runs follow. The song slows down to the same pace as the beginning as Mercury descends with a series of “ooh”s, and ends with lines very similar to the beginning.

The outro
Using an ascending scale, the guitar and piano is able to keep that upbeat feeling of triumph, while still allowing the song to wind down. Mercury then plays a Bb run on the piano, as the song builds up to the finale with a ritardando. Then he sings “Nothing really matters” followed by a light handed arpeggio on the piano. After a couple repetitions of the line he ends the song in the key of Eb.

Conclusion and opinion
“Bohemian Rhapsody” is overall about a journey. It takes you from point a to point b, only to in the end return back to point a, which make you realize just how far you’ve come. Queen has created homage to different popular musical genres in this song.
Overall, i think what really makes this song is the music itself and the fact that it changes to so many different genres throughout the six minutes. I think if there is one song you can compare it to, it would be “a day in the life” by Beatles, because it also have a “weird” part in the middle of the song, which doesn’t really make any sense.
But with that said “Bohemian Rhapsody” is to me a genius song, which can be interpreted in so many different ways, both when it comes to the lyrics and especially when it comes to the music. The musical part here is just really well written and there something for everyone.