Is ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ actually a good song?
Just because a song is massively successful doesn’t always mean it’s actually good. It pains me to say that I hail from a country where cartoon handyman Bob the Builder is two-nil up against Pulitzer-winning folk bard Bob Dylan in terms of number-one hit singles and where an insufferable vacuity of talent called LadBaby can break records by none other than The Beatles with a series of parody singles that gratuitously lean on brittle sausage roll-based puns. When it comes to dishing out merits to novelty tripe over generational talent, the UK public has a frankly shameful track record.
We have, as a nation, somehow managed to afford Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ a total of 14 weeks at the top of the charts in two separate spells. Achieving nine of those weeks at number one upon its initial release in 1975 and racking up a further five following the death of frontman Freddie Mercury in 1991, the six-minute epic stands tall as the band’s most successful song and is perhaps their most instantly recognisable hit as well. Not only has it swept up all of these individual accolades, but it also represents a triumph in ambitious songwriting that none have managed to score the same level of success with.
Before we discuss its excellence, let’s get any criticisms of the song out of the way first. The argument that the song is overplayed is a valid criticism; nobody can truly say that every instance in which they’ve heard ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ has come from an inner desire to listen to the song, and it does suffer the unfortunate fate of its ubiquity being something that reduces its overall enjoyability. In addition to this, I can fully understand why the overwhelming level of capital-T theatricality that the song exhibits might be a bit much for some listeners to digest or, indeed, be a complete turn-off.
However, this is Queen we’re talking about, a band whose appeal largely centres around their histrionic displays and making rock music sound opulent. ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, in many ways, is a culmination of everything that has ever made the band popular, all rolled into one behemoth of a song that straddles pop balladry, opera and hard rock. You can’t fault Queen fans for falling head over heels for ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, and it’s also perfectly understandable that it holds the power to win over sceptics.
You might immediately look towards the exuberant vocal performance of Mercury as being the highlight of the song or the way it seamlessly slinks between sections without seeming like a hideous Frankensteinian creation. It might be guitarist Brian May’s virtuosic solos that capture your attention, or indeed the head-spinning falsetto of drummer Roger Taylor as he shouts “Galileo!” repeatedly during the operatic section of the song.
Whatever it is that appeals to you most, there’s so much going on in the song to be latched onto that it’s virtually impossible to listen through the track and not find something impressive about it. The fact that it manages to be coherent throughout despite the disparity between sections is in itself a stroke of genius, and while other acts have managed to write multi-part songs that were inspired by it, they don’t quite manage to pull it off quite as effortlessly as Queen did.
Like it or loathe it, it’s tough to make a case against ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ being a grand achievement in rock composition, and as someone who has never been a fully-fledged devotee of Queen and their music, I’m still perfectly happy to concede that it deserves all the plaudits it gets for being a masterpiece.
