 Freddie Mercury wrote the lyrics, and there has been a lot of speculation as to their

meaning. Many of the words appear in the Qu'ran. "Bismillah" is one of these and it
literally means "In the name of Allah." The word "Scaramouch" means "A stock
character that appears as a boastful coward." "Beelzebub" is one of the many names
given to The Devil.

Mercury's parents were deeply involved in Zoroastrianism, and these Arabic words
do have a meaning in that religion. His family grew up in Zanzibar, but was forced
out by government upheaval in 1964 and they moved to England. Some of the lyrics
could be about leaving his homeland behind. Guitarist Brian May seemed to suggest
this when he said in an interview about the song: "Freddie was a very complex
person: flippant and funny on the surface, but he concealed insecurities and
problems in squaring up his life with his childhood. He never explained the lyrics, but
I think he put a lot of himself into that song."

Another explanation is not to do with Mercury's childhood, but his sexuality - it was
around this time that he was starting to come to terms with his bisexuality, and his
relationship with Mary Austin was falling apart.

Whatever the meaning is, we may never know - Mercury himself remained tight-
lipped, and the band agreed not to reveal anything about the meaning. Mercury
himself stated, "It's one of those songs which has such a fantasy feel about it. I
think people should just listen to it, think about it, and then make up their own
minds as to what it says to them." He also claimed that the lyrics were nothing more
than "Random rhyming nonsense" when asked about it by his friend Kenny Everett,
who was a London DJ.

The band were always keen to let listeners interpret their music in a personal way to
them, rather than impose their own meaning on songs, and May stated that the
band agreed to keep the personal meaning behind the song private out of respect
for Mercury.
 Mercury may have written "Galileo" into the lyrics for the benefit of Brian May, who
is an astronomy buff and in 2007 earned a PhD in astrophysics. Galileo is a famous
astronomer known for being the first to use a refracting telescope.
 The backing track came together quickly, but Queen spent days overdubbing the
vocals in the studio using a 24-track tape machine. The analog recording technology
was taxed by the song's multitracked scaramouches and fandangos: by the time
they were done, about 180 tracks were layered together and "bounced" down into
sub-mixes. Brian May recalled in various interviews being able to see through the
tape as it was worn so thin with overdubs. Producer Roy Thomas Baker also recalls
Mercury coming into the studio proclaiming, "oh, I've got a few more 'Galileos'
dear!" as overdub after overdub piled up.
 Was Freddie Mercury coming out as gay in this song? Lesley-Ann Jones, author of
the biography Mercury, thinks so.

Jones says that when she posed the question to Mercury in 1986, the singer didn't
give a straight answer, and that he was always very vague about the song's
meaning, admitting only that it was "about relationships." (Mercury's family religion,
Zoroastrianism, doesn't accept homosexuality, and he made efforts to conceal his
sexual orientation, possibly so as not to offend his family.)

After Mercury's death, Jones says she spent time with his lover, Jim Hutton, who
 told her that the song was, in fact, Mercury's confession that he was gay. Mercury's
good friend Tim Rice agreed, and offered some lyrical analysis to support the theory:

"Mama, I just killed a man" - He's killed the old Freddie he was trying to be. The
former image.

"Put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger, now he's dead" - He's dead, the
straight person he was originally. He's destroyed the man he was trying to be, and
now this is him, trying to live with the new Freddie.

"I see a little silhouetto of a man" - That's him, still being haunted by what he's
done and what he is.
 Queen made a video for the song to air on Top Of The Pops, a popular British music
show, because the song was too complex to perform live - or more accurately, be
mimed live on TOTP. Also, the band would be busy on tour during the single's
release and thus unable to appear.

The video turned out to be a masterstroke, providing far more promotional punch
than a one-off live appearance. Top Of The Pops ran it for months, helping keep the
song atop the charts. This started a trend in the UK of making videos for songs to air
in place of live performances.

When the American network MTV launched in 1981, most of their videos came from
British artists for this reason. In the December 12, 2004 issue of
the Observernewspaper, Roger Taylor explained: "We did everything we possibly
could to avoid appearing in Top Of The Pops. It was one, the most boring day known
to man, and two, it's all about not actually playing - pretending to sing, pretending
to play. We came up with the video concept to avoid playing on Top Of The Pops."

The group had previously appeared on the show twice, to promote the "Seven Seas
of Rhye" and "Killer Queen" singles.
 The video was very innovative. It was the first where the visual images took
precedence over the song. It was based on their Queen II album cover, with the
four band members looking up into the shadows. Directed by Bruce Gowers, it was
shot in three hours for £3,500 at the band's rehearsal space.

Gowers got the gig because he was one of the few people who had experience
working on music videos - he ran a camera on a few Beatles promotional clips,
including the one for "Paperback Writer." The two big effects used in the video were
the multiple images that appear in the "thunderbolts and lightning section," which
were created by putting a prism in front of the camera lens, and the feedback effect
where the image of the singer travels to infinity, which was done by pointing a
camera at a monitor (like audio feedback, this is something you usually tried to
avoid, but when harnessed for artistic purposes, was innovative). At the time, the
video looked high-tech and futuristic. It was also the first music "video" in the sense
that it was shot on video instead of film.
 This was Queen's first Top 10 hit in the US, peaking at #9 on April 24, 1976. In the
UK, where Queen was already established, it went to #1 on November 29, 1975 and
stayed for nine weeks, a record at the time.
 This got a whole new audience when it was used in the 1992 movie Wayne's World,
starring Mike Myers and Dana Carvey. In the film, Wayne and his friends lip-synch
to it in his car (the Mirth Mobile), spasmodically head-bobbing at the guitar solo. As
 a result of the movie, it was re-released as a single in the US and charted at #2
("Jump" by Kris Kross kept it out of #1).

In America, this marked a turning point in Queen's legacy. The band's 1982
album Hot Space contained a side of disco-tinged tracks at a time when disco was
anathema to rock fans. The album had disappointing sales in the US, and also cost
Queen in credibility. Their tour to support the album would be Freddie Mercury's last
with Queen in America, and the band was largely forgotten there for the rest of the
decade. When Wayne's World revived "Bohemian Rhapsody," American listeners
remembered how cool Queen really was, and they the ringing endorsement from
Wayne and Garth to back them up.
 At 5:55, this was a very long song for radio consumption. Queen's manager at the
time, John Reid, played it to another artist he managed, Elton John, who promptly
declared: "are you mad? You'll never get that on the radio!"

According to Brian May, record company management kept pleading with the group
to cut the single down, but Freddie Mercury refused. It got a big bump when
Mercury's friend Kenny Everett played it on his Capital Radio broadcast before the
song was released (courtesy of a copy Mercury gave him). This helped the single
jump to #1 in the UK shortly after it was released.

There was a single version released only in France on a 7", cut down to 3:18, edited
by John Deacon, but beyond the initial pressing of this French single, the only
version recognized is the album version, at 5:55. This little-heard French single
started right at the piano intro, and edited out the operetta part. Brian May admitted
that there may have been additional parts for the song on Freddie's notes, but they
were apparently never recorded. >>
 Brian May recalled recording "Bohemian Rhapsody" in Q Magazine March 2008:
"That was a great moment, but the biggest thrill for us was actually creating the
music in the first place. I remember Freddie coming in with loads of bits of paper
from his dad's work, like Post-it notes, and pounding on the piano. He played the
piano like most people play the drums. And this song he had was full of gaps where
he explained that something operatic would happen here and so on. He'd worked out
the harmonies in his head."
 In 1991, this was re-released in the UK shortly after Freddie Mercury's death. It
again went to #1, with proceeds going to the Terrence Higgins Trust, which Mercury
supported.
 Elton John performed this with Axl Rose at the 1992 "Concert For Life," held in
London at Wembley Stadium. It was a tribute to Freddie Mercury, who died of AIDS
the year before. In 2001, Elton John got together with Eminem, who like Axl Rose,
was often accused of being intolerant and homophobic. They performed Eminem's
"Stan" at the Grammys.
 When this was re-released in the US, proceeds from the single went to the Magic
Johnson AIDS Foundation. Johnson and Freddie Mercury were two of the first
celebrities to get AIDS. Rock Hudson, who succumbed to the disease on October 2,
1985, was another.
 Thanks to this track, A Night At The Opera was the most expensive album ever
made at the time. They used 6 different studios to record it. Queen did not use any
synthesizers on the album, which is something they were very proud of.
 In an interview with Brian May and Roger Taylor on the Queen Videos Greatest
Hits DVD, Brian said: "What is Bohemian Rhapsody about, well I don't think we'll
ever know and if I knew I probably wouldn't want to tell you anyway, because I
certainly don't tell people what my songs are about. I find that it destroys them in a
way because the great thing about about a great song is that you relate it to your
own personal experiences in your own life. I think that Freddie was certainly battling
with problems in his personal life, which he might have decided to put into the song
himself. He was certainly looking at re-creating himself. But I don't think at that
point in time it was the best thing to do so he actually decided to do it later. I think
it's best to leave it with a question mark in the air." >>
 A Night At The Opera was re-released as an audio DVD in 2002 with the original
video included on the disc. Commentary from the DVD reveals that this song had
started taking shape in the song "My Fairy King" on Queen's debut album. >>
 In 2002, this came in #1 in a poll by Guinness World Records as Britain's favorite
single of all time. John Lennon's "Imagine" was #2, followed by The Beatles' "Hey
Jude."
 The name "Bohemian" in the song title seems to refer not to the region in the Czech
republic, but to a group of artists and musicians living roughly 100 years ago, known
for defying convention and living with disregard for standards. A "Rhapsody" is a
piece of Classical music with distinct sections that is played as one movement.
Rhapsodies often have themes. >>
 Roger Taylor (from 1000 UK #1 Hits by Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh): "Record
companies both sides of the Atlantic tried to cut the song, they said it was too long
and wouldn't work. We thought, 'Well we could cut it, but it wouldn't make any
sense,' it doesn't make much sense now and it would make even less sense then:
you would miss all the different moods of the song. So we said no. It'll either fly or it
won't. Freddie had the bare bones of the song, even the composite harmonies,
written on telephone books and bits of paper, so it was quite hard to keep track of
what was going on." Kutner and Leigh's book also states that, the recording included
180 overdubs, the operatic parts took over 70 hours to complete and the piano
Freddie played was the same one used by Paul McCartney on "Hey Jude."
 Ironically, the song that knocked this off the #1 chart position in the UK was "Mama
Mia" by Abba. The words "Mama mia" are repeated in this in the line "Oh mama mia,
mama mia, mama mia let me go." >>
 The story told in this song is remarkably similar to that in Albert Camus' book The
Stranger. Both tell of a young man who kills, and not only can he not explain why he
did it, he can't even articulate any feelings about it. >>
 You can make the case that the song title is actually a parody, and a clever one at
that. There is a rhapsody by the composer Franz Liszt called "Hungarian Rhapsody,"
and "Bohemia" is a kingdom that is near Hungary and was part of the Austro-
Hungarian Empire. Furthermore, "Bohemian" is an adjective for something unusual
or against convention, and the song is just that.

So, "Bohemian Rhapsody" could be a clever title that not only parodies a famous
work but also describes the song. In a nod to the Liszt composition, Queen would go
on to release a live DVD/CD package in 2012 titled "Hungarian Rhapsody," featuring
their famous shows behind the Iron Curtain in Budapest on the Magic tour in 1986.
 This song was covered by Constantine M. (featuring the cast of We Will Rock You)
and also by The Flaming Lips for the 2005 Queen Tribute album Killer Queen.
 Another popular cover is by Grey DeLisle, who did it as an acoustic ballad for her
album Iron Flowers.
 Queen fans, and also Brian May, often colloquially refer to the song as "Bo Rhap" (or
"Bo Rap").
 The name "Bohemian Rhapsody" makes many appearances in popular culture:

Session 14 of the popular anime series Cowboy Bebop is named "Bohemian

Rhapsody."

The Jones Soda Company has a drink named "Bohemian Raspberry" in honor of this
song.

In one of the episodes of the TV miniseries Dinotopia, a character cheats on a poem

project by using the first part of the song as his entire project. The inhabitants,
having never heard the song before, are amazed at the sound of it. >>
 Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett used some of the lyrics in their book Good Omens.
The main character (Crowley) plays it in his car all the time. They also refer to other
Queen songs, but mostly "Bohemian Rhapsody." >>
 The Mexican group Molotov sampled the chorus for their Spanish-language rap
version of this song called "Rap, Soda and Bohemias." It appears on their 1998
album Molomix. >>
 In 2009, The Muppets Studio released a video featuring the Muppets performing this
song. It was first web video for The Muppets, and it was extremely popular: the
video was viewed over 7 million times the first week it was up. The furry ones
changed the song a bit, omitting the lyrics that begin, "Mama, just killed a man"
with Animal screaming "Mama!"
 In an interview with Q magazine March 2011, Roger Taylor was asked if this seemed
like a peculiar song when Mercury first suggested it? He replied: "No, I loved it. The
first bit that he played to me was the verse. 'Mama, just killed a man, dah-dah-la-
dah-daah, gun against his…' All that. I thought, 'That's great, that's a hit.' It was, in
my head, a simpler entity then; I didn't know it was going to have a wall of mock
Gilbert and Sullivan stuff, you know, some of which was written on the fly. Freddie
would write these huge blocks of mass harmonies in the backs of phone books."
 The song is one of Freddie Mercury's great mysteries - according to everyone in the
band, only he knew truly how it would come together, and according to some
sources, its genesis could have come many years earlier. Chris Smith, the keyboard
player in Mercury's first band Smile, claimed that Freddie would play several piano
compositions at rehearsals, including one called "The Cowboy Song," which started
with the line, "mama, just killed a man."
 In sharp contrast to the rest of the song's recording and composition, Brian May's
signature solo before the opera section was recorded on only one track, with no
overdubbing. He stated that he wanted to play "a little tune that would be a
counterpart to the main melody; I didn't just want to play the melody."

It is one of his finest examples of creating a solo in his mind before playing it on
guitar; something he did many times throughout Queen's career. His reasoning was
always that "the fingers tend to be predictable unless being led by the brain."
 Weird Al Yankovic took the entire song and sung it to a polka tune, called simply
"Bohemian Polka," which is on his 1993 album Alapalooza. >>
 Panic! At The Disco covered the song in 2016 for the Suicide Squad soundtrack,
having previously played Queen's epic tune during their live shows. Frontman
Brendon Urie told Beats 1's Zane Lowe:

"I know right that's a monster to tackle but it was so much fun. I love that song so
much. We've been playing it live for a few years and it just made so much sense to
try it.

It really just gave me a bigger respect for how that song was written. I mean the
song was there, all the pieces were there. It was just figuring out each harmony
piece by piece. But man, what a monster of a vocal song. It's so crazy there's just
like thirty-four vocals stacked on top of each other. It's incredible. I know right
that's a monster to tackle but it was so much fun. I love that song so much. We've
been playing it live for a few years and it just made so much sense to try it."
 Panic! at the Disco's cover peaked at #64 on the Hot 100. It was the fourth version
to reach the chart following Queen's original, The Braids from the High School
Highmovie soundtrack (#42, 1996), and the Cast of Glee (#84, 2010).
 In the 2018 film Bohemian Rhapsody, Rami Malek stars as Freddie Mercury. In May,
the trailer was released, showing some scenes where the song is discussed,
including a part where they record "the operatic section." There is also this
exchange:

Record company executive: "It goes on forever! It's six bloody minutes!"

Mercury: "I pity your wife if you think six minutes is forever."

That record company executive is played by Mike Myers, who revived the song
in Wayne's World.
 The song made its third visit to the top 40 of the Hot 100 in November 2018 when it
zoomed in at #33 following the release of the Bohemian Rhapsody soundtrack. This
meant that "Rhapsody" had reached the Top 40 in three different decades ('70s,
'90s and '10s), something only Prince has done before, with "1999."
 Thanks to the film Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen had a big role at the 2019 Oscars
ceremony. The band (with Adam Lambert on vocals) opened the show, performing
"We Will Rock You" and "We Are The Champions"; Mike Myers and Dana Carvey
introduced a tribute to the film with their scene from Wayne's World. The film was
nominated for five awards, winning four: Leading Actor (Rami Malek), Film Editing,
Sound Editing and Sound Mixing. It lost Best Picture to Green Book.