Yes, I started this blog as a means to introduce the younger generation to the videos (and eventually just the music) of pop culture that you simply have to know. Which kind of implies that you might not yet know them (as was the case for so many catchy tunes I could no longer leave that unchallenged). But… come on. You do know Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”, don’t you? If only from Wayne’s World? Or the guy who sang it in it’s entirety being hideously plastered in the back of a police car? The 2009 Muppets Version? Wikipedia features a whole page dedicated to cover-versions of this brilliant song.

It took Freddie Mercury more than half of a decade to figure out the song in his head and it took the band months to actually record it, in five different studios and with hundreds of overdubs, as the technology of the time allowed for a maximum of 24 concurrent tracks – the final piece features hundreds of them, collected from tape that became see-through in the process, as they were used so often.

When it was finally finished they were told by various executives in no uncertain terms, that the song at almost six minutes was “much too long” (it was highly unusual for songs to skid over the three minutes mark at the time) and that there was “no hope of it ever being played on the radio“. Well, Mercury’s friend DJ Kenny Everett did play it on Capital Radio, 14 times over the span of a weekend, to be exact. The rest is pop history.

By the way: While our first blog-entry might have been The video that would define a genre this one, having been released a decade earlier, was the video that made the industry recognise the medium as a marketing instrument. Originally recorded so the band would not have to perform live on the BBC’s “Top of the Pops”, where they would have had a hard time mimicking playing the song, it became pivotal in selling the single and others would soon follow suit. Still not the first music video by far though, that honour officially goes to “The Little Lost Child“, a song by Joseph Stern and Edward Mark, who set their recording to a slide show back in 1894…