Quote:
Originally Posted by hikeeba
And Hikeeba is here with his first pick: Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen (which is actually my second pick, but I do not trust John, who is on the clock).
Write up to be posted in this very space right here!
Well....maybe not exactly that space, but this space here:
I could fill out my greatest songs with just Queen songs. But of all them, this one stands out as the most unique. This is one of the first songs I remember listening over and over again on 45 (if you lift up that drop arm thingy the needle just goes back to the beginning!! - heck, sometimes I even turned it over and listened to undrafted (rhyming "forget her" with "carburetor"...very clever))
Call it rock-opera or mock-opera, whatever - but having a 6-minute song with such an internal variety not only get airplay, but hit #1 twice (in the UK), as well as chart across the world, is a testament to its ability to connect with people. (In spite of
Wayne's World.) Also, since Mercury kept the real interpretation to himself, all you interpretationalists can have a field day dissecting it.
It's also a great vocabulary and history builder - silhouette, Galileo, Bismillah, Scaramouche, fandango, etc. (I can't remember if I learned "figaro" from this or "What's Opera, Doc?"...I'd also like to mention, that as a wild youth, I played this at a piano recital.)
My only problem is that this couldn't be performed live (unless you cloned 4 more Freddies.) But, hey, maybe it's a song like this, where 24-tracks of tape are just not enough, that pushed engineers along.....
Often imitated - never duplicated,
Bohemian Rhapsody is my #1 pick.