Bohemian Rhapsody
Musical impact

In 1976, when asked for his opinion on "Bohemian Rhapsody", the Beach Boys ' leader Brian Wilson praised the song as "the most competitive thing that's come along in ages" and "a fulfillment and an answer to a teenage prayer—of artistic music". Producer Steve Levine said the track broke "all sonic production barriers" in a fashion similar to the Beach Boys' " Good Vibrations " (1966), which also consisted of disparate music sections recorded separately, Phil Spector 's " Be My Baby " (1963), and 10cc 's " I'm Not in Love " (1975). Greg Lake, whose song " I Believe in Father Christmas " was kept from number one in the UK by "Bohemian Rhapsody" when it was released in 1975, acknowledged that he was "beaten by one of the greatest records ever made", describing it as "a once-in-a-lifetime recording".

Addressing the song's enduring popularity, author and music lecturer Jochen Eisentraut wrote in 2012: "A year before punk made it unfashionable, progressive rock had an astounding success with the theoretically over-length (nearly 6-minute) single 'Bohemian Rhapsody' which bore many of the hallmarks of the 'prog' genre". He said it was "unique at this point to hear a hit single in this style", it was "more accessible than other music of the genre" and was "able to communicate beyond the usual confines of the style". Author and progressive rock historian Stephen Lambe called it a "remarkable" single and said it "provides a neat but coincidental bridge between prog in its prime and the move to more aggressive songwriting", suggesting the song "feels like a grotesque (although probably unintentional) parody of progressive rock". The New Rolling Stone Album Guide described it as "either a prog-rock benchmark or the most convoluted novelty song ever recorded". Writing for the BBC in 2015, the Chicago Tribune ' s music critic Greg Kot called it a "prog-rock pocket operetta " and said the song's "reign as a work of wigged-out genius rather than a dated gimmick testifies to its go-for-broke attitude—one that has resonated across generations".

In 2009, The Guardian ' s music critic, Tom Service, examined the song's relationship with the traditions of classical music, describing its popularity as "one of the strangest musical phenomena out there":

The precedents of "Bohemian Rhapsody" are as much in the 19th-century classical traditions of rhapsodic, quasi-improvisational reveries—like, say, the piano works of Schumann or Chopin or the tone-poems of Strauss or Liszt —as they are in prog-rock or the contemporary pop of 1975. That's because the song manages a sleight of musical hand that only a handful of real master-musicians have managed: the illusion that its huge variety of styles—from intro, to ballad, to operatic excess, to hard-rock, to reflective coda—are unified into a single statement, a drama that somehow makes sense. It's a classic example of the unity in diversity that high-minded musical commentators have heard in the symphonies of Beethoven or the operas of Mozart. And that's exactly what the piece is: a miniature operatic-rhapsodic-symphonic-tone-poem.

A comparison was also made between the song and Led Zeppelin 's 1971 epic " Stairway to Heaven " by music writers Pete Prown and HP Newquist. They observed both songs were "a slow, introspective beginning and gradual climb to a raging metal jam and back again", with the notable distinction being "while Zeppelin meshed folk influences with heavy metal, Queen opted for the light grandeur of the operetta as part of its hard rock". They said "for sheer cleverness alone, not to mention May's riveting electric work, 'Bohemian Rhapsody' rightfully became one of the top singles of 1975 and established Queen in the elite of seventies rock bands".

In 2015, The Economist described it as "one of the most innovative pieces of the progressive rock era". It wrote "though Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones and the Beatles ' Paul McCartney had experimented with symphonic elements, and Roger Waters of Pink Floyd and Pete Townshend of the Who had created narrative albums with distinct 'movements', none had had the audacity to import a miniature opera into rock music."
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