Iconic 70s rock stars Queen have been well-known for their incredible style and visuals — so much so that their music video for arguably their most famous song ended up receiving major accolades a whopping 32 years after it was released.
On this day in 2007, the band’s legendary promotional video for their beloved hit “Bohemian Rhapsody” was named the United Kingdom’s best music video via a survey of music lovers released on October 6. The survey, which was organized by the O2, consisted of 1,051 adults, and a whopping 30% of those polled cited the visual as their top choice.
Potentially the coolest part about this recognition for the band is that the visual was made with minimal resources. The band, and the video’s director Bruce Gowers, had an incredibly small budget to work with: £3,500, which is a little less than $5,000 in today’s cash. As far as the shoot itself, it only took the group a short four hours to pull it all together.
“I didn’t get commission and was just a hired freelancer,” Gowers once told The Mirror. “We didn’t really know what things cost in those days as we weren’t used to doing videos. We had no idea if £3,500 was cheap or not. Everything was set up for their tour so they performed as they would in front of an audience – and it looked like they were.”
Interestingly enough, the band was tasked with performing the single on the beloved show Top of the Pops — which was a daunting prospect considering how complex the song is structurally. So, instead of allowing the song to be played over a dance routine by Pan’s People, they improvised and created the visual.
“It was filmed with the express purpose of giving it to Top of the Pops. For those of us who remember it, it wasn’t a classy program. Top of the Pops didn’t have a good reputation among musicians. Nobody liked it, really,” Brian May, guitarist for the legendary band, previously told the BBC. “It always seemed like a bit of a travesty. If your music had any meaning, it seemed to trickle away when you were standing on a box in a studio with lots of kids around. But you could hardly knock it because it was the way that records were sold.”
After the shoot was completed, the band and Gowers were unsure what would ultimately come of it — until it ended up airing at random on the music show.
“We all sat around a TV at the editing facility with our fingers crossed, wondering whether it was going to be on – and then, wham! There it was,” Gowers previously revealed to The Mirror. “The crazy thing is, when it aired the fans weren’t the only ones seeing it for the first time — the band were too.”
Ultimately though, the video’s director does think about what they could’ve done as a team with more resources. “If we’d had more money and more time we would have made something that was a lot better than what it was,” Gowers noted. “I always say it was six minutes that changed my whole life. It was also the greatest risk of Queen’s career.”
This story was originally reported by Parade on Oct 6, 2025, where it first appeared in the News section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com ’
