Bohemian Rhapsody
by Queen
- 72
- BPM
- Bb major
- Key
- 6B
- Camelot
- 40
- Danceability
- 26
- Acousticness
Freddie Mercury was playing pieces of songs on the piano in the late 1960s, according to his friend Chris Smith, a keyboard player in Smile. One piece, known simply as "The Cowboy Song", held lyrics that ended up in Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" years later: "Mama ... just killed a man." Mercury called the finished track a "mock opera" and said it came from three songs he had written. Producer Roy Thomas Baker remembered Mercury playing the opening ballad on the piano in his flat, then stopping to say, "And this is where the opera section comes in!" Then they went out to dinner.
Brian May said much of the band's material was written in the studio, but this song "was all in Freddie's mind" before work began. Queen spent a month rehearsing at Ridge Farm Studio in Surrey in mid-1975. Recording began on August 24 at Rockfield Studio 1 near Monmouth, South Wales, and four more studios were used before the end of September. The tracks had to be bounced across eight generations of 24-track tape. That meant nearly 200 tracks of overdubs.
Released in 1975 on A Night at the Opera, the song topped the UK Singles Chart for nine weeks.
Bohemian Rhapsody runs at 72 BPM, the tempo of soul, trip-hop and half-time hip-hop. In classical terms it sits in largo territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 3.33 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 833 ms. It is in Bb major, Camelot 6B, which shares its notes with G minor and mixes cleanly with Eb major and F major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.