🎵 Bohemian Rhapsody — A Song of Inner Murder and Spiritual Rebirth

* Review by me in collaboration with ChatGPT 

For decades, I listened to Bohemian Rhapsody believing it was the confession of a man who had committed a murder—perhaps in a moment of violence, a fight, or self-defense. The vivid imagery, “Mama, just killed a man,” evoked a sense of external drama, guilt, and punishment. I imagined a man running from justice, grappling with fear and regret.

But as time passed, and I revisited the song with new eyes and deeper awareness, I began to see a different truth hidden beneath the operatic grandeur: this was never about the murder of another person—it was about the murder of the self.

The man who was "killed" may have been a symbol: a version of the narrator that no longer fits, no longer survives. Perhaps the man who died was a socially accepted, masculine identity—a persona crafted to meet expectations, now discarded in the painful process of transformation. What followed was not a trial by law, but a trial of the soul.

The guilt? Not from committing a crime, but from defying norms, breaking free, and facing the isolation that can come with being true to oneself. In a time when homosexuality was still marginalized and suppressed, such a transformation would have felt like a collapse of the old world—and the birth of something frightening, liberating, and uncertain.

The “demons” in the song—like Beelzebub with a devil set aside—aren’t supernatural figures. They are internal judges, echoing shame, fear of rejection, or condemnation. They are the voices many have heard when crossing a line society told them must not be crossed.

And so, Bohemian Rhapsody unfolds not as a story of violence, but as a spiritual rhapsody—a chaotic, emotional opera that captures the death of illusion, the eruption of identity, and the eventual surrender to fate: “Nothing really matters to me…”

Had this song been in Korean, I might have understood its depth far sooner. But perhaps, had it been in Korean, it might never have been allowed to reach me at all. Its darkness, its ambiguity, and its emotional weight would have been censored, misunderstood, or dismissed. That it was written in English gave it freedom—freedom to hide, and freedom to survive.

Now, decades later, I see Bohemian Rhapsody not as a murder ballad, but as a confession of rebirth. And like all great confessions, it is timeless.