The extended version lasts 7 minutes 16 seconds and features a longer introduction and ending. For the Bohemian Rhapsody soundtrack the single introduction is added to the album version creating a 3 minutes 43 seconds edit. The introduction is played on an electronic keyboard and is assisted by cymbals, drums and a guitar ( Red Special). The single version lasts 4 minutes 21 seconds and differs from the album version by the 40-second introduction and a longer synthesizer solo which starts at 2:33. īesides the album version, a single version and an extended version were released.
The keyboard solo was done in one take on a Roland Jupiter-8 synthesizer, except the last note with a portamento down one octave, which was captured via punching in. The song features session musician Fred Mandel, who plays all of the keyboard parts he was involved with the song when it featured only a drum machine and a guitar part. It has three verses with one bridge, no chorus, and relatively little section repetition. Most of the song follows a traditional 12 bar blues progression in E major. The song was written in 1983 by John Deacon and released in April 1984. The song features on the band's compilation album, Greatest Hits II. It also topped the charts of Austria, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The single reached only number 45 on the US Billboard Hot 100, but reached number three in the UK and was certified Platinum with over 600,000 copies sold/equivalent streams.
Īfter its release in 1984, the song was well received in Europe and South America and is regarded as an anthem of the fight against oppression. Whereas the parody was acclaimed in the United Kingdom, where cross-dressing is a popular trope in British comedy, it caused controversy in the United States. The second part of the video included a composition rehearsed and performed with the Royal Ballet and choreographed by Wayne Eagling. The song is largely known for its music video for which all the band members dressed in drag, a concept proposed by drummer Roger Taylor, which parodied the long-running ITV soap opera Coronation Street. The track became a staple of the bands during their 1984–85 Works Tour and their 1986 Magic Tour. It appears on the album The Works (1984), and was released in three versions: album, single and extended. I think we proved that." I Want to Break Free" is a song by the British rock band Queen, written by their bassist John Deacon. "We had done some really serious, epic videos in the past, and we just wanted people to know that we didn't take ourselves too seriously, that we could still laugh at ourselves. On the official Queen website, under the entry for The Works is the following quotation from the drummer, Roger Taylor: The video is best seen as just the four lads larking about, a little like the Beatles in The Magical Mystery Tour. The video could easily replace the first half of the video for Radio Ga Ga or for A Kind of Magic Hammer To Fall less so. The video has very little to do with the lyrics of the song. The song itself is about a break-up of a relationship, written by the bassist, John Deacon, himself married with several children. Queen merely kept a tradition going, with exaggerated comic effect, by parodying a well known, to UK viewers, soap opera. Similar acts would appear on the BBC 1970s nostalgia show "The Good Old Days" which reprised Victorian era music hall acts. In Britain, this practise continued in the early 20th Century with Alastair Simms, in the St Trinian films, and Arthur Lucan, as Old Mother Riley, respectively.Īt the time of the Queen's formation in the late 1960s/early 1970s it was still common to see acts on British television such as Dick Emery, Danny La Rue, Les Dawson and Monty Python appear 'drag-up'. This tradition survives today in its loosest sense as the pantomime dame. The female parts in Shakespeare's and Marlowe's plays and in opera were played by men. It is an established and significant part of European theatrical tradition, particularly in Catholic where countries where women were not permitted to perform on stage until the late 1700s.
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