If pressed for my top three favourite Queen songs, which seems like a very strange thing to press someone about, I would have put ’39 somewhere in the top three for sure. It’s a beautiful little song that is easy to sing along to and gets in my head for a while every time I hear it.
We put on A Night at the Opera this morning as we were relaxing in the living room and it had been some time since I had heard the whole album. When “’39” came on, for the first time in my life I found myself really wondering about the lyrics.
Because of the jangly nature of the folk tune, and despite the Queen-being-Queen over the top choir bits, my ears had always just assumed the song told a story of pioneers traveling back in 1939. Reading up on it now, the song has become even more interesting to me.
First, before we go into the meaning, here is the song if you’re not immediately familiar with it:
The song has been described as “sci-fi skiffle”, so my first port of call is to learn what the hell “skiffle” is and, knowing now, I’m embarrassed I didn’t know the term earlier.
“Skiffle is a musical genre that draws from American folk, blues, country, bluegrass, jazz, and jug bands. In the early-to-mid twentieth century, skiffle bands originated in different parts of the United States and were often tied to working-class, Black American blues and jazz scenes—such as those of New Orleans.” (quote source and further history).
So, the skiffle part I get now and the sci-fi immediately makes sense. The over the top choir bits I mentioned a moment ago definitely resonate as being other-worldly in that camp, 70’s sci-fi way that makes you think of robots that are clearly made up of painted cardboard.
Now that my brain was firing along the sci-fi range, I was very confused about what I thought the song was about.
I’m a terrible lyric-listener and have no shame in admitting that; a good and catchy tune can wash over any lyrics for me and I’ll sing along happily, sometimes not really paying attention to what the words are saying.
The song is about an astronaut and his crew who go on what is, for them, a year long journey to find a new home, with Earth dying. They return only to find that 100 years have passed on Earth and everyone they knew, including the astronaut’s love, is long gone and the crew are roughly the same age as their grandchildren.
I knew Brian May (who wrote the song and performs the lead vocals on the album) had studied astrophysics; I had no idea he’d ever written a song that told a story about time dilation. This morning the scope and scale of this song for me went from covered wagons on dusty trails to the sweeping cosmic dust of the universe that has separated two lovers. May does an excellent introduction to the song in this live performance here from 2014.
Now that we all know this together (even if I am late to the party), have a listen again, this time live with Freddie Mercury singing lead in Houston in 1977. I LOVE the over the top choir bits in this performance.
* * * * *
Tape The Night YouTube Cover Battle
I love someone who does a good cover and there are no shortage of covers for this song. I watch them all so you don’t have to and here are a few hits and misses in our first Tape The Night YouTube Cover Battle:
- The Foo Fighters, with Brian May and Roger Taylor, surprisingly disappoint in this version of the song. While I’m sure it would have been cool to have been there live, recorded, the grandiose possibilities of where the song’s range can take you are just not reached.
- For solo attempts, Chris Murphy’s guitar is on point and I love his vocals, but he leaves out the over the top choir bits so it’s not quite our winner. Similarly, Mars Madex gives us her solo rendition and it’s a very solid performance, even if it also leaves the sci-fi out and focuses mainly on the skiffle.
- Some good production value here and excellent instrumentation but there’s a passion and spark missing from the performance, especially around the choir, although I always like it when an artist represents their own harmonizing visually across the screen
- Last in the also-rans, musically not the best, passion is not the best, but I want to give these three brothers a shout-out because I love the idea of kids this age recording a song like this in their bedroom and just doing the best they can with it..
This means the winner of our first Tape The Night YouTube Cover Battle, for her rendition of “’39”, is Brandi Carlile.
The sci-fi is not shied away from, her twang, especially towards the end is pitch perfect and I always love a female artist who takes the lower part in the harmonies and it’s just overall beautifully done.
* * * * *
Last but not least, for no particular reason than because I love a good audio/visual mashup, here is “’39′” laced over clips from Interstellar.
Now that I know what this song is about and I can appreciate the unique artistic blend of the musical genres even more, this is not only, in my view, the best song on the album (yes, even beating out “You’re My Best Friend” and “Bohemian Rhapsody”) but it’s officially at the top of the list as best Queen song of them all.
* * * * *
Further Reading:
I read an article, no longer online, that makes an interesting point about the relevance of the song in today’s modern world.
“The ideological gulf between generations has likely never been wider. The news is inescapable; faced with the constant drumbeat of the internet and the 24-hour news cycle, after just a year, one feels 100 years older.”