Queen
Every radio programmer in 1975 told Queen that a six-minute single would never get airplay. Even Elton John called it "the campest thing I've ever heard." A DJ named Kenny Everett obtained an advance tape and broke the rules by playing it 14 times over two days on Capital Radio. Listener demand forced EMI to release it uncut. The recording nearly destroyed itself: producer Roy Thomas Baker later recalled holding the tape up to the light during overdub sessions and being able to see straight through it, the music all but gone from the magnetic coating.
In our deep dive into Bohemian Rhapsody, we trace the song from a recording process that pushed the technology of its era to its absolute limit to the single that rewrote what radio would and wouldn't do.
