With an appropriately flamboyant sound and rhythm it’s a word best known for the title of Freddie Mercury’s epic Bohemian Queen song, and several major classical works, but where is it used in song lyrics? A rhapsody has a variety of overlapping definitions – an ecstatic expression of feeling, an ancient Greek poem, or epic poem, or part thereof that can be recited, or a piece of instrumental music that involved a flamboyant, emotionally liberating style. To rhapsodise is the verb, and rhapsodomancy means reaching a state divination by opening works of poetry at random. So rhapsody, in all of its forms, points to unfettered creativity, and a sense of elevation.
Freddie Mercury’s hugely successful song from Queen’s 1975 album A Night At The Opera sums up these qualities, particularly with its innovative, hugely overdubbed operatic section, but his inspiration would not only have been from the vocal genre, but also complex and flamboyant classical pieces such as Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies for piano, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini op. 43 (1934), for piano and orchestra by Sergei Rachmaninoff, or indeed George Gershwin’s orchestral Rhapsody in Blue (1924) which opens with a gorgeous glissando on the clarinet.
But let’s also dip into some music where this beautiful word is actually employed and begin with a jazz standard composed by composed by George Fragos, Jack Baker and Dick Gasparre,. It was a hit several times, first in 1941, sung variously by Jimmy Dorsey, Dinah Shore, Charlie Barnett, but also by many artists since, particularly in the 1950s including Frank Sinatra, Tony Martin in the 1952 film Clash By Night, as well as many great jazz players including John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Coleman Hawkins and Art Blakey. But let's hear the Dinah Shore version:
And when I hear you call
So softly to me
I don't hear a call at all,
I hear a rhapsody
And when your sparkling eyes
Are smiling at me
By contrast, here’s Siouxsie and the Banshees' epic, but gently beautiful goth song Rhapsody - from 1988's Peepshow:
And I have seen all I want to
And I have felt all I want to
But we can dream all we want to
Yes we can dream all we want to
Rhapsody
In the soil of are sadness
Hear our hearts bell a serenade
A faint choir tenderly shaping
A lament a hollow refuge
Rhapsody oh, rhapsody
Rhapsody, rhapsody
There's still light with you
There's still light with you rhapsody
It's all we want to, it's all we want to
Rhapsody oh, rhapsody
Back in 1973, on their album Hat Trick, the folk country band America interweaved the word into a musical metaphor with love, and wind in the trees.
Don't wait for me at the willow tree
Love will be waiting for you
The wind through the leaves plays a symphony
Harmony, rhapsody too
And on Jonathan Wilson's 2011 album, Natural Rhapsody, the title track summons up a ghostly, smoky, dark image:
And when you were a child
Space melted marrow made you smile
Indeed the natural rhapsody
When we hear your friend of the road
With your rebel unbutton is tongue
Come closer where leaving
The shapes that we drew in are shifting
When is all said and done
We are condensed of the horizon
Indeed the natural rhapsody
The natural rhapsody
The natural rhapsody
But for Lou Christie, rhapsody is a raunchy word, as things get sexy in the back of the car in the 1966 hit Rhapsody In The Rain:
Baby the raindrops play for me
A lonely rhapsody 'cause on our first date
We were makin' out in the rain
And in this car our love went much too far
It was exciting as thunder
Tonight I wonder where you are
The windshield wipers seemed to say
"Together - together - together - together"
And now they are saying
"Oh, ne...ver, ne...ver"
Ooh-wee, ooh-wee, baby
Rhapsody in the rain
Rhapsody in the rain
Angels keep cryin' for me (don't... stop)
Angels keep cryin' for me (don't... stop)
Roxy Music's Pyjarama (1973) gets similarly excited, if also sexually frustrated through the word:
Couldn't sleep a wink last night
Oh oh, how I'd love to hold you tight?
They say you have a secret life
Made sacrifice your key to paradise
And never mind, take the world by storm
Just boogaloo a rhapsody divine
Take a sweet girl just like you
How nice if only we could bill and coo.
Bob Marley, however, is smoothly tortured by the memories of love's rhapsodies, which aren't just pleasure, but suffering, from the album Soul Revolution II (1971)
There you are, cryin' again
But your loveliness won't cover your shame
There you are, you're takin' true love
And while you're takin' true love, you givin' the blame
(How could I) Could I be so wrong
To think that we could get along?
Days I wasted with you, child
If I count there'll be a million or two
Now I stand alone through the memories
That haunts me, that haunt
Yeah, and I walk alone through the rhapsodies
That taunts me, that taunts me, me
Mel Tormé's forlorn love torment meanwhile comes through a sweet rhapsody of the moon, in a song covered by many artists.
It came gliding into my heart riding
on a moon beam from above
Sorrow ended and the whole world blended
In a rhapsody of love
And finally, another beautiful moon rhapsody, perfumed by flowers, comes from the pen of Joni Mitchell and the Clouds album of 1969:
Songs to aging children come
Aging children, I am one
Does the moon play only silver
When it strums the galaxy
Dying roses will they will their
Perfumed rhapsodies to me.
It would be tempting to rhapsodise about this word ad infinitum, and the songs in which it appears and inspires, but please feel free to add your own below comments.
Want to suggest other examples of this word in song lyrics, or other unusual words or contexts? Does this song make you think of something else? Then feel free to comment below, on the contact page, or on social media: Song Bar Twitter, Song Bar Facebook. Song Bar YouTube. Please subscribe, follow and share.
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