"Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen: Earworm of the day
By Mark Czerniec
October 29, 2007 8:36 AM

What started it was Duwayne putting the above video on his MySpace page. It seemed harmless enough when I began to watch it yesterday morning. The guy sits down, reels off a darned skilled version of "Bohemian Rhapsody" on classical guitar, and finishes by mimicking the gong's shimmer. It was that last touch which made me watch it all over again. And then once more after that, to show Amy.

Want to dazzle friends at parties by playing the same thing yourself? Look here — it's some sample excerpts from a detailed Edgar Cruz guitar lesson on the Freddie Mercury masterpiece, which is where our first guitarist learned it:

That in turn reminded me of an a capella rendition I had seen a few weeks ago, by the University of California Men's Octet:

By this point, the song was immovably wedged between my ears. I was up at 3:00 this morning with "Mama mia! Mama mia!" echoing through my brain — very, very frightening. So, at daylight I had to read its Wikipedia entry to clear up a few questions I had about its lyrics. For instance, what the heck does "Bismillah" mean? It's a fascinating read, especially the part about the repeated overdubbing literally rubbing the oxide layer off the recording tape.

The Wikipedia article also points out that the groundbreaking music video for "Bohemian Rhapsody" established conventions for all music videos from then on:

I guess if I have to have an earworm, this is at least an interesting one.

Poor Amy has been walking around for days now humming, "Gimme a break / Gimme a break / Break me off a piece of that ___ ___ ___."