“Bohemian Rhapsody” is one of the most popular songs and among the best selling singles of all times. All of this is strange because even by today’s standards, the song is far from any pop-song standard: it’s seven minutes long, it is combining disparate musical styles, it has no chorus, with lyrics that make allusions to murder and nihilism. On top of that, the production of the song cost an enormous amount of money, including the video which was shot seven years before MTV started airing (although, unlike the song, the video took only four hours to film.) It was a bold move by Queen, but it proved to be more than a success. Upon release, “Bohemian Rhapsody” stayed at the top of the UK Singles Chart for nine weeks, reaching number one again in 1991 for another five weeks. It topped the charts in several other countries as well, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and The Netherlands. In the United States, the song charted at number nine in 1976. It returned to the chart at number two in 1992, when the song was included in the film Wayne's World, which revived its American popularity.
The song is so complicated that Brian May, Freddie Mercury and Roger Taylor sang their vocal parts continually for ten to twelve hours a day. The entire composition took three weeks to record, in four different studios, and in some sections featured 180 separate overdubs. The video in the background is an acoustic guitar rendition by Steve Bean, which shows the complexity of the song’s harmonic structure, rhythmic diversity, and melodic lines. Steve Bean is a professional classical guitarist based near Peterborough in Cambridgeshire. His playing style is predominantly Classical with a Flamenco influence. His repertoire is varied and encompasses compositions by artists as wide-ranging as Vivaldi and John Williams to more popular pieces by The Beatles, Queen and Lady Gaga.
