If this song comes on in the car, you must roll down all your windows and sing along at or beyond the limit of the volume your lungs can produce. It's the law.
0:06: You don't start a song with a one-word vocal solo unless you know it's going to be awesome.
0:10: And then we get the choir, which is the hallmark of a particular brand of great Queen song. I mean, this isn't a rock-and-roll song, really. It's a song for a choir with a solo tenor. "Somebody to Love" and "Bohemian Rhapsody" are so memorable because Queen goes completely off the reservation while reminding you that you came from the land of glam-rock, but only for purposes of perspective. Queen goes back to stuff that sort of sounds like Led Zeppelin from time to time, not because that's where home is, but so you know where Led Zeppelin is when Led Zeppelin is a tiny little dot in the distance.
0:24: They couldn't have forecast how awesome this sound would be if they'd started the music video by planting a flag in the ground that reads: "I hereby claim the next five minutes for the Kingdom of Bitchin' Rock and Roll."
0:36: I've long said that Queen is as much Brian May's band as Freddie Mercury's, but while there's no Queen without Brian May, there's also no Queen without Freddie Mercury. And there's no Brian May without Queen, but there is Freddie Mercury without Queen, which is proved by moments like this.
0:45: Everything goes up--the melody, the dynamics--and you stagger to the first tease of the complete majesty of "Somebody to Love" in a choppy 12/8, which is the time signature you'd walk in when you're slightly punch-drunk from having witnessed the face of God.
0:54: The first chorus of "Somebody to Love" isn't full-frontal nudity--it's a tease. He's unzipping his pants and pulling down his boxer briefs slightly, so you get a peek at an exquisitely sculpted Apollo's Belt, but nothing more.
1:14: This is where it gets hard to sing along, because Freddie and the chorus are trading off the main lyrical string. There's so little wasted energy in this song.
1:26: It's coming.
1:30: Almost there.
1:35: Okay, now we're all nekkid.
1:50: Not wild about the lyrics from here to the guitar solo. I guess that means that this song is not literally perfect.
2:04: FACT: The guitar solo is at least 90 percent as fun to sing along with as any vocal part of the song.
2:35: YES! YES! YES!
2:43: Great bridge/verse combinations have a sense of adventure to them. Like the bridge should make you feel like a cat who escaped the house and wandered around outside for a while, then got overwhelmed by all the new sounds and smells and--while he's glad to have had the adventure--is relieved and comforted to be back home again in the third verse.
2:56: Is "I just gotta get out of this prison cell / One day I'm gonna be free" the most memorable line of the song for anyone else?
3:05: A normal song would wrap up here.
3:07: This is the best.
3:20: No, the clapping part's the best.
3:39: Nice twist on the original theme.
3:53: YES! YES! YES!
4:03: And now you get a solid minute where everyone puts their arms on each other's shoulders and rocks back and forth in a moment of human understanding. And you really need it after what came before.
What a fuckin' banger.
