The 1976 song Freddie Mercury picked over ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’: “A better song”
Freddie Mercury didn’t ever see himself as the kind to be one of the greatest frontmen in history.
If you looked at him off the stage, he was always incredibly mild-mannered and more than willing to talk about the mechanics behind a lot of their songs, but if you got him in front of countless fans, he felt right at home delivering some of the greatest moves that any singer had ever attempted. But what mattered most to Mercury were the songs, and he felt that some of the best pieces that he ever made weren’t always the masterpieces that everyone thought they were.
Because as much as Queen were a united front, they could be brutally honest when they said that they weren’t a fan of each other’s songs. Most of Hot Space wasn’t really Brian May’s idea of fun, but when looking at the success of ‘Another One Bites the Dust’, it’s not exactly hard to see why they went in that direction. They were making music to satisfy themselves and their audience, but the key behind every great Queen song is not knowing what to expect by the time it’s finished.
There are countless tunes in their arsenal that would have made for great arena rock for any other band, but the real experimental pieces of their repertoire are where things get a lot more interesting. And what’s interesting is that you can hear what every band member excelled at based on what they wrote. May was responsible for some of the heaviest riffs, Roger Taylor was making straight-ahead rock and roll, John Deacon had a R&B slant to a lot of his songs, but Mercury was making tunes that had nothing but absolute charm.
He could be heartbreakingly sincere when he needed to be on tracks like ‘Love of My Life’, but tunes like ‘Seaside Rendezvous’ reminded everyone that the band weren’t taking themselves too seriously. But when you look at all of the songs on A Night at the Opera, there was no way that anything could compare to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. The whole song was a musical journey, but when looking back on the tune, Mercury was never all that satisfied with what ended up on the record.
If you think about it, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was almost more of a fun concept than a song in Mercury’s mind. He had been stockpiling these little song fragments, and while none of them made the most sense being played off of one another, releasing them as their own mini-medley is the reason why it’s remained so popular over the years. But in terms of nailing songs from inspiration to execution, Mercury felt that he did a much better job when making tunes like ‘Somebody to Love’.
Mercury idolised divas like Aretha Franklin, and he felt that ‘Somebody to Love’ was miles better than what their masterpiece turned into, saying, “As far as the writing side of it, I think I could write better than ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. ‘Somebody to Love’, in my estimation, is, from a writing aspect, a better song. But it’s very difficult, because people think of songs in terms of hits. It really depends on how you look at it.”
That might sound insane to throw shade at one of the greatest rock and roll songs of all time, but when looking at ‘Somebody to Love’, there’s hardly a moment that could be more perfect. The band were in love with the idea of turning themselves into a gospel choir, and even if they looked like the last band that would get that kind of massive singalong, Mercury delivered the kind of performance that wouldn’t have felt out of place being sung by one of Motown’s greatest divas.
No one’s taking away from the raw beauty of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, but Mercury felt that there were a lot better tunes that said everything that he wanted to say better. His masterpiece was already too strange for anyone to decipher on their own on first listen, but given Mercury’s history of writing pop songs, it was practically a mission to make songs that sounded as good as this did.
