{"id":46142,"date":"2018-12-14T03:00:51","date_gmt":"2018-12-14T08:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=46142"},"modified":"2018-12-13T15:22:30","modified_gmt":"2018-12-13T20:22:30","slug":"bohemian-rhapsody","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/12\/14\/bohemian-rhapsody\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Bohemian Rhapsody&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/nationalpost.com\/opinion\/colby-cosh-on-bohemian-rhapsody-the-worlds-most-popular-song-aint-much-of-a-song\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Colby Cosh<\/a> on the media phenomenon of &#8220;Bohemian Rhapsody&#8221; &#8230; which, in his opinion, isn&#8217;t all that good as a <em>song<\/em>:<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"853\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/fJ9rUzIMcZQ\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230; Queen wasn\u2019t really a four-piece; it was a pansexual mutant alien athlete-hero plus three ugly, highly talented Englishmen. And \u201cBohemian Rhapsody\u201d almost isn\u2019t a song so much as a captured moment. Considered as a song, there isn\u2019t much to it except as a showcase for virtuosity: it\u2019s not among Queen\u2019s 20 best. And ordinary people can\u2019t take a crack at \u201cBohemian Rhapsody\u201d expecting to do it nicely and competently, in the way they might do \u201cBlackbird\u201d or \u201cWonderwall.\u201d To be used for performance by the general public, \u201cBohemian Rhapsody\u201d basically requires a roomful of drunks united in the ironic, non-judgmental spirit of karaoke.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps there is not much more to be said of \u201cBohemian Rhapsody\u201d by way of explanation. Queen enjoyed trying on American hats from time to time (ah, if only Elvis had stayed around to receive the gift of \u201cCrazy Little Thing Called Love\u201d). But an American group could never have made anything that was weird in this particular way \u2014 wallowing in the pathos of a French gangster movie, then diving into a cryptic Dantean nightmare, piling up gestures and word-sounds into a unabashedly hokey panorama. There is no content at all to the thing, <em>per se<\/em>, except what the band members put into it as performers. In no way, I promise, will knowledge of Scaramouche\u2019s place in the <em>commedia dell\u2019arte<\/em> or the life of Galileo Galilei unlock some hidden layer of understanding.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBohemian Rhapsody\u201d is an exquisitely made thing whose intricacy and beauty everybody can appreciate on more or less the same level. That is the special formula for mass popularity in all of the arts. They will tell you the Mona Lisa has a zillion layers of biographical or political meaning, but the painting really is what it is for everybody, and in roughly the same way. Every ordinary grownup can participate in the intimacy and the mystery of it, and it is not really a superior experience, as many great paintings might be, for somebody with a bundle of university degrees. As often happens I am reminded of Andy Warhol\u2019s praise for Coca-Cola. \u201cA Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Colby Cosh on the media phenomenon of &#8220;Bohemian Rhapsody&#8221; &#8230; which, in his opinion, isn&#8217;t all that good as a song: &#8230; Queen wasn\u2019t really a four-piece; it was a pansexual mutant alien athlete-hero plus three ugly, highly talented Englishmen. And \u201cBohemian Rhapsody\u201d almost isn\u2019t a song so much as a captured moment. Considered as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,28],"tags":[263,102,86,200],"class_list":["post-46142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-media","tag-1970s","tag-art","tag-criticism","tag-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-c0e","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46142"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46143,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46142\/revisions\/46143"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}