![\"Freddie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Freddie-Mercury-Queen-Singer-Frontman-Musician-Far-Out-Magazine-F-1140x855.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
(Credits: LastFM)<\/p>\n
Tue 31 March 2026 8:32, UK <\/p>\n
It\u2019s a rarity in life. It will only happen maybe a dozen times: that moment when you hear a song for the very first time, and it pulls the floor out from under you. <\/p>\n
Flawed and frenzied, you\u2019ll race back to the proverbial jukebox and drop in another coin, hoping to embalm yourself in the rhapsodic torpor you have just experienced, like a baby after its first addled encounter of ice cream. This is music at its best, and when a band creates a song like that, even they find themselves wrapped up in it. Just ask Brian May<\/a>.<\/p>\n Queen didn\u2019t get off to a flier. The band\u2019s debut album had been a disappointment, leaving them \u201cfrustrated\u201d. Management were desperately trying to label them as the new Led Zeppelin and then the new ABBA when that didn\u2019t stick. Queen, meanwhile, didn\u2019t want to be the new anything. <\/p>\n They just wanted to be Queen. But what exactly was that? What was the essence of the group that an A&R worker could happily note down on their docket and pass on to the press? Well, they were a group in the traditional sense, first and foremost. Each member brought their own array of influences, inspirations, and ideas. Queen functioned as a true ensemble.<\/p>\n Freddie Mercury\u2019s favourite songs<\/a> were as disparate as \u2018Kashmir\u2019 by Led Zeppelin through to \u2018Goin\u2019 Back\u2019 by Dusty Springfield and \u2018Vesti La Giubba\u2019 sung by Carreras, Domingo, Pavarotti and Mehta. May was enamoured with the technical stylings of Ritchie Blackmore and the \u201cincredible\u201d Rory Gallagher.\u00a0 <\/p>\n While Roger Taylor had his eye on traditional songwriting prowess in the form of favoured tracks like \u2018Jealous Guy\u2019 by John Lennon, and even, in time, futurist innovation like \u2018Born Slippy\u2019. John Deacon was more than happy to facilitate from the shadows, his eclectic taste and understated attitude rendering him the perfect glue.<\/p>\n This created a bold and magnetic melee, defined, more than anything, by a sense of envigorating drama. The song that sits proudly in the centre of this magical and unique Venn is \u2018Bohemian Rhapsody\u2019. It is one of those rare songs that hit you like the moment you take one step too many when climbing a flight of stairs. <\/p>\n The band\u2019s breakthrough masterpiece?<\/p>\n The wavering pantomime of the production pulls you into the rollercoaster ride of the song\u2019s wavering emotion. Above all, it refuses to go unnoticed. After a shaky beginning where the band struggled to make their true identity known, it burst through like an assegai and made them unmistakable. <\/p>\n It was pop\u2019s first opera, and that meant it couldn\u2019t possibly be classified as \u2018the new\u2019 anything. It was too pioneering singular for that, which is why May figures the group live and die by it.<\/p>\n \u201cIt encapsulates a lot of what we are, what we have been, and what our dream was. There are a lot of facets to Queen\u2019s music. We entered into so many areas believing we could innovate. \u2018Bohemian Rhapsody\u2019 has so much content,\u201d he says. It\u2019s a mini-opera, but it says a lot about its appeal that the anthem \u2013 so technically ambitious that they had to adapt it radically for live performances \u2013 still managed to top the UK charts upon release, despite Elton John claiming it was surely far too long and experimental to budge the needle of mainstream public interest.<\/p>\n The anthem waltzes through hard rock, art rock, prog and simple pop modes. It switches between four keys and 4\/4 meter is modulated on more than one occasion. None of that should work. It should be too confusing and convoluted for any listener. But somehow, it achieves exactly what its title implies: an exultant journey through modern boho artistry. That\u2019s all Queen ever wanted to do.<\/p>\n \u201cIt felt very dangerous and very exciting. So we wanted all that. We wanted that base layer of what\u2019s new.\u201d<\/p>\n Brian May<\/p>\n As May explains, \u201cWe had a vision in our heads and a collective dream in the very early days because we were in an atmosphere of change, innovation, and new freedoms. We grew up with our influences as everybody does, but we were lucky enough to grow up just as rock and roll was being born.\u201d With the song, the group aimed to push it beyond its infancy towards something more technical without ever losing sight of the liberating energy of the Promethean heroes of the genre.<\/p>\n This is exactly why May notes that there are flavours of Little Richard, Buddy Holly, and Elvis Presley in the mix. It is, in many ways, the band realising the ambitions that these luminaries stirred up. \u201cWe had a dream that we would be songwriters. We would be creators. And underneath all that would be something very imponderable, thrilling, heavy, and challenging. I suppose inspired by all the stuff that was happening as we were starting to evolve as a group, which was that heavy music was being born. It never was there before,\u201d May told Vulture<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s hard to imagine a world where we just didn\u2019t have heavy music here,\u201d he adds. But the world had decreed its arrival as necessary. The song was written mere months after the horrors of the Vietnam War had \u2018officially\u2019 come to a close. So, while lyrics like \u201cMama, just killed a man\u201d might be the source of endless mystery today, death seemed so commonplace at the time that such a line was only rendered startling by virtue of its delivery and the change of pace that precedes it.<\/p>\n In its own way, rock \u2018n\u2019 roll was borne from the heaviness of the modern world. As May explains, \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t call Buddy Holly heavy now, although at the time, people thought he was very cutting edge and dangerous. In that sense, it was. You also wouldn\u2019t think the Shadows were heavy. It\u2019s purely instrumental music, but at the time it had a great edge to it. It felt very dangerous and very exciting. So we wanted all that. We wanted that base layer of what\u2019s new \u2013 like the beginnings you can find on Jeff Beck\u2019s Truth album, on Led Zeppelin\u2019s first album<\/a>, or Black Sabbath\u2019s first album.\u201d<\/p>\n All of that is channelled into \u2018Bohemian Rhapsody\u2019, a song that you wouldn\u2019t even describe as heavy itself. However, when looked at in the cold light of day, it\u2019s so dense that you could drop an anvil into it and never live to hear it hit the bottom. For anyone who thinks Queen aren\u2019t deep, then this is the song to point them towards.<\/p>\n It is full of imagination, gusto, and technique. In an age of punk, that product of that technicality was also notable, with Taylor explaining that to pull the song off \u201cyou actually had to be good at your instrument\u201d. Vitally, that prowess brough about a heavy emotional weight. It was even inspired by Abbey Road.<\/p>\n \u201cWe wanted to have that as our bedrock,\u201d May says of the heaviness at the heart of the song and band. \u201cBut we wanted to build on it with melody and harmony and tunes, which move people, tell stories, and make people feel something that they never quite felt before,\u201d he added of its Beatleseque nature. <\/p>\n Concluding, \u201cSo it\u2019s a big dream. Collectively, we started to work on achieving that dream from the first album onward.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Bohemian Rhapsody\u2019 was when they realised it most purely.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n![\"Queen](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Queen-Freddie-Mercury-Brian-May-Roger-Taylor-John-Deacon-Far-Out-Magazine-F--1024x768.jpg\")
<\/a>(Credits: Far Out \/ Spotify)<\/p>\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/faroutmagazine.co.uk\/wp-content\/themes\/far-out-magazine\/img\/google-discover.svg\")
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