Bohemian Rhapsody

It ticks several boxes:

It abandons traditional song structure.
There are tempo changes.
There are irregular bars (in the opera section)
There are many key changes.
It combines hugely different musical parts in an unusual way.
There is inspiration from classical music (opera).

I'd say it is prog, but it is also something else - like much great art.

Queen stretched the boundaries of classic rock so I voted for 'Something Else' . They were just too unique a band to be pigeon holed imo.

dr wu23 wrote: How about classic rock....like you said in your original post ...? Never thought of them as prog rock or even prog related which is how PA has them sorted....where's the 'sorting hat' when you need it?

Edited by The Dark Elf - April 03 2021 at 17:25

Is this the real thing? Or is this just parody? If I open my eyes and look up to the sky and see, it's clearly progressive rock opera, so I'm voting for Something Else entirely. 

It's not like Queen was not progressive on their previous albums, or on A Night At the Opera, for that matter.  I suggest you go back and listen to Queen II as a primer.

Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" is undoubtedly one of the classic rock songs of all time. I guess this may be what progressive rock sounds like to the non-prog general public. But I see it more as a parody of progressive rock more than progressive rock itself. Recall that Jethro Tull regarded "Thick as a Brick" as a parody of the concept album, but this doesn't in any way detract from the brilliant album that is. Similarly, regarding "Bohemian Rhapsody" as a parody doesn't detract from the brilliant song that is. What do you think?