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While concentration camps are a heavy frame of reference for considering a song that is less than completely serious, the above description suggests to me that play and artistic engagement at any age have this same property of creatively reconciling us to the world we have, and allowing us to survive in it. They allow us a space to manage the emotions, actions, and attitudes in a practice environment that equip us for engaging the world. Our particular genre, especially confessional murder ballads like “Bohemian Rhapsody,” gives vent to the things with which we struggle to cope, whether they come from within us or without.  Having a good head-banging guitar solo after all that hard, emotional work doesn’t hurt, either.

Coda

With a song as well-known and as complex as “Bohemian Rhapsody,” we have any number of other potentially promising roads which I will have to leave unexplored for the time being. Beyond The Muppets and “Wayne’s World,” there are other more recent appearances of the song in popular culture. An episode in the first season of the TV show “Glee,” essentially uses an elaborate stage production of the song as a soundtrack for a labor and delivery scene for a teen mother–cutting back and forth between the stage and the delivery room. Coming of age, indeed.

The song has also received a number of parody treatments beyond The Muppets; “Weird Al” Yankovic’s Spike Jones-like “Bohemian Polka” foremost among them, perhaps. You can also find a “Star Wars” version.” The song and its various elements continue to grow as cultural memes.

I noted above that the song is still closely tied to Freddie Mercury and Queen. Nevertheless, a few other versions have emerged. Some, like Panic! at the Disco‘s go for a close resemblance to the original. Hayseed Dixie‘s may have been intended as a parody, but is actually musically satisfying in its own way, its banjo and mandolin perhaps pointing me back to more familiar-sounding traditional murder ballad territory. These songs, and a few others, I’ll leave you with the links above and a selected discography playlist on Spotify below.