A close reading
Bohemian Rhapsody
by QueenStone Cold Classics (1975)
381 words · 161 distinct · 50 lines · 5:55
The lead
×3
one line comes back
“بِسْمِ ٱللَّٰهِ”
The text
50 lines
Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality
Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see
I'm just a poor boy, I need no sympathy
Because I'm easy come, easy go, little high, little low
Any way the wind blows doesn't really matter to me, to me
Read from the LRCLIB text. Another transcription would change the count a little; the shape would hold.
I. The hook
One line keeps coming back.
“بِسْمِ ٱللَّٰهِ”
times, word for word
It lands at lines 29, 31 and 33. 4% of the lines repeat one already sung, and 6% belong to lines sung three times or more.
II. The clock
It falls silent for 34 seconds.
- Words a minute
- 64
- First word
- 0:00
- Longest silence
- 34 s
- from 2:32
- Busiest 15 seconds
- 67
- words
III. The vocabulary
Most-used words
20 words- 01go14
- 02let11
- 03no10
- 04just8
- 05will6
- 06really5
- 07ooh5
- 08not5
- 09never5
- 10galileo5
- 11i'm4
- 12poor4
- 13easy4
- 14mama4
- 15all4
- 16nothing4
- 17matters4
- 18life3
- 19from3
- 20see3
Stopwords set aside. The bar beneath each word is its share of the most-used.
Variety
161 distinct words in 381
Used only once88 words
Longest wordscaramouche
Average word3.71 letters
Lines that ask a question10%
IV. In the catalogue
The 11th longest of 226 songs Queen has recorded.
Every mark is one of Queen’s 226 songs, placed by its figure. The rule is the catalogue’s median; the oxblood mark is this song.
Read the whole catalogue →Words · 38111th longest of 226