I
The first time I heard Bohemian Rhapsody, I was in seventh grade. My friend Burt1 played while we hung out after school. I thought it was fine, if a bit long. Fun enough. The second time I heard Bohemian Rhapsody, I was in seventh grade. My friend Burt played it while we hung out after school. The third time I heard Bohemian Rhapsody, I was in seventh grade. The 180th time I heard Bohemian Rhapsody, I was in seventh grade.
Every day after school, Burt would play this same song, putting it on like an anthem that would never end. Isn’t this the greatest song ever, he’d ask? It was not.
By the time I was in eighth grade, I hated Bohemian Rhapsody. I hated it more than it deserved. It’s a fine song to hear once a month. For me, it had overstayed its welcome.2
A quick google search tells me that Bohemian Rhapsody is 2 hours, 14 minutes long. This seems correct enough that it takes me a second to realize that it’s referring to the movie of the same name. The song itself is somehow only 5:55, as long as two normal song. By my math, I’d listened to about 16 hours of a song I’d never really liked by the time I was 13. And again, I didn’t hear it until I was 12.
This is all to say that I do not care for Bohemian Rhapsody.
II
In 2019, I took a trip to Belgium. On my last night in Bruges, I sat beneath the fabled clocktower, ready for its nightly 9pm3 concert. The night before had been Beethoven, the night before that Lady Gaga. My final night, it played an instrumental version of Bohemian Rhapsody. I sighed, and enjoyed my kriek4.
The next day I left for Antwerp.
III
The city of Antwerp hosts a beer festival once a year. The entire town turns into a music festival celebrating their one local mediocre beer. I did not know this when I booked my trip to the city, but I accidentally booked directly atop it.
At one point, a band launched into a version of the Black Eyed Peas’ Tonight’s Gonna Be A Good Night, entirely in Flemish, aside from the chorus, which was in English. I felt like Mr. Bean in Church (TODO LINK), mumbling through verses and joining in with my whole heart for every chorus. Tonight, they promised, was going to be a good night.
That was a lie.
IV
The main musical festival was in a square directly below my hotel room. The festival peaked on its last day, Sunday. The music and dancing filled the streets long after the sun had set. I had a morning flight, and tried to get some sleep, wrapping a pillow around my ears. It was, of course, futile. But, just before midnight, the announcer came on again in English. He adopted a dour tone. “Well folks, it’s been fun. But it’s almost midnight, and you know what that means…”
I sighed in relief, dropping the pillow from around my ears.
“That’s right, it’s TIME TO GET THIS PARTY STARTED!” He immediately cranked the volume, launching into a Flemish cover of Bohemian Rhapsody. Never have you heard a more frenzied noise of excitement than hundreds of Antwerpens drunkenly singing Bohemian Rhapsody at midnight.
I couldn’t help but laugh.
Little did I know that tomorrow the curse would begin.
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Name changed to protect the guilty. ↩
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In the summer of 2015, a summer job provided me with a rental car that had a broken console and a subscription to Sirius XM. It could only play a single station, a station that played “Lost Boy” by Ruth B every morning at 8am. Unlike Bohemian Rhapsody, I liked this some the first time I heard it. The first three times even. Like Bohemian Rhapsody, now, I cannot stand it. ↩
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Well, 21:00 ↩
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I don’t especially like cherries, and I don’t especially like beer, but combined they form kriek, which rules. ↩