Bicycle Race
| "Bicycle Race" | ||||||||||
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| Single by Queen | ||||||||||
| from the album Jazz | ||||||||||
| A-side | "Fat Bottomed Girls" | |||||||||
| Released | 13 October 1978 | |||||||||
| Format | 7" | |||||||||
| Recorded | June–July 1978 | |||||||||
| Genre | Rock | |||||||||
| Length | 3:01 | |||||||||
| Label | EMI, Elektra | |||||||||
| Writer(s) | Freddie Mercury | |||||||||
| Producer(s) | Queen and Roy Thomas Baker | |||||||||
| Queen singles chronology | ||||||||||
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"Bicycle Race" is a single by the British rock band Queen. It was released on their 1978 album Jazz and written by Queen's frontman Freddie Mercury. It was released as a double A-side single together with the song "Fat Bottomed Girls". The song is notable for its video featuring a bicycle race with nude women at Wimbledon Stadium, which was edited or even banned in several countries.
The song was written by Mercury and was inspired by watching the 18th stage of the 1978 Tour de France passing Montreux where the band were recording Jazz in the Mountain Studios. It starts with a chorus unaccompanied by instruments. The chorus is followed by two verses connected with a bridge, both followed by a chorus. Around the middle of the song there is a solo played with numerous bicycle bells. The song has an unusual chord progression with numerous modulations, a change of metre (from 4/4 to 6/8) in the bridge, and multitracked vocal and guitar harmonies.
The lyrics are topical for the time and contain social, political and pop-culture references, such as religion, Vietnam War, Watergate, drugs, fictional characters (Peter Pan, Frankenstein and Superman), and the films Jaws and Star Wars. The song also mentions actor John Wayne. The lyrics also mention the exclamatory interjection, "Hot dog!" and the idiom "Cool it, man!"
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