Song Meaning

I was in a fight the other day with my neighbor about what Bohemian Rhapsody is really about.He said that it was about Freddy Mercury coming out of the closet,but i new that couldn't be even more wrong.

I was going to go on one of those song fact web sites,
but I decided to get the answer from ATS members instead.






TRw

it was actually about the lead singer killing another man (although he never did that in real life) and then confessing it to his mother >Mama just killed a man
Put a gun against his head Pulled my trigger now he's dead Mama, life had just begun But now I've gone and thrown it all away MamaIs this the real life? Is this just fantasy?< The second is confessing his sin to his mother, and the last (and probably most crazy!) is where he is harassed by the consequences of his actions. the names Scar-a-mouche, Bielzebub, and Bismillah are actually names of the 7 (or is it 9...i forget?) rumored devils there are. the word Fan-dan-go means dancing, which one of the devils does while the man is trapped in his sin. Bizmillah will not let him live not being in denial >Bismillah! No we will not let you go
(Let him go!) Bismillah! We will not let you go (Let hime go

If you ever want to know what a song is about you can check out www.songmeanings.com People reply with mostly what they think the song is about but alot of times people will link info from other sites that actually state what the song is about.

Among gay men in Seventies London, gay life was often called 'the real life', or so I hear. With that in mind, it is fairly easy to understand the opening lines of the song.

Freddie Mercury wasn't one of those people who recognized his own sexuality from the off. Given his conservative expatriate-Indian family background, it's only too likely that he was afraid of it; he probably fought against or repressed his increasingly evident attraction to other men during his adolescence. He was certainly still trying to do so in his twenties; he even had a solid long-term relationship with a woman, name of Mary Austin, who remained close to him after he'd come out and -- it is rumoured -- nursed him through his final illness.

Mercury and Austin were still an item when the former wrote Rhapsody. The 'mama' in the song could be Fred's mum, an archetypal, judgemental mother-figure, or Mary Austin herself. Most probably all three at the same time.

The man the singer has 'just killed' is his own straight self. I'll leave you to interpret the gun / trigger business according to your inclination.

The rest of the verse, all the way to 'if I'm not back again this time tomorrow, carry on' is self-explanatory and obviously addressed to Austin.

The second verse makes it clearer: the combination of lust and fear ('shivers down my spine / body's aching all the time') and the need to 'leave it all (the straight life) behind and face the truth.' The man who 'doesn't want to die' is the straight Fred, while the gay one (they are, of course, one and the same), wishes he had 'never been born at all'.

The choral part ('Scaramouche, Scaramouche') expresses Mercury's sense of guilt and fear over what he is about to do.

The part in 6/8 time that follows it is harder to interpret: could it be Mary's reaction? Or the reaction of his own former, straight self to being abandoned? Either way, it fits. Either way, it's scary...

...but at the end of the song, the singer has found a kind of provisional acceptance: 'nothing really matters to me'.

Simple, really.

Just don't ask me to prove any of it.

Originally posted by joshter
Scar-a-mouche, Bielzebub, and Bismillah are actually names of the 7 (or is it 9...i forget?) rumored devils there are.

This is not true.

Beelzebub, 'Lord of the Flies', is indeed a Middle Eastern deity whose name appears in the Bible, and whom some Christians equate with the Devil.

But Scaramouche is the eponymous hero of a novel by Rafael Sabatini. The name is based on that of a comic character in the commedia dell'arte called Scaramuccio. No devilish connection at all, sorry.

As for Bismillah, it's Arabic for 'in the name of God'. Every verse of the Koran begins with that word -- again, not very diabolical.

See above for my explanation of the lyrics.

Originally posted by ddoT
If you ever want to know what a song is about you can check out www.songmeanings.com

Actually, that's songmeanings.net. The other url is just a domain for rent.

You can see I'm not very busy today.

Astyanax
Thanks for your hard work and effort that you put in




TRw