ummm...I'm not actually sure what this is about but the video gives afew clues...

In my day they called it venereal disease. Today they lump all venereal diseases together under the heading of STDs. In any event, that's what I think it's about.

Rock on!

Again, wrong information being peddled as wisdom.
Scottitude, STDs???, why because desease and spread is mentioned? did u even read the songs lyrics?

The song is about spreading the message of love thoughout the world, not syphylus.......Ie the line This message is love, should have been your key to unraveling this song..

Wonder how you went with interpreting something tricky like bohemian raphsody.

Whoa, slow down there, twinkle twinkle little tsar!

On the surface, you are correct; the message is love.
Between the lines, the message is an STD spread through "making" love, or "hooking up" as you crazy kids call it these days.

When the song was released (were you alive?) the relevance was clear; Aids was starting to kill people. It eventually killed Freddie.

Forgive me if I don't believe there's anything romantic about:

"Some sleepless nights in wait for you
Some foreign presence you feel, comes
creeping through
Some stream of hope
The whole world through
Spread like some silent disease
You'll get yours too"

Sounds pretty ominous to me. And the "message" gets taken from partner to partner the world over continuing to "infect" people of both genders.

Did *you* even read the lyrics?

It's okay, though, soon enough, if you stay in school and study real hard, wisdom will come your way!

Scottitude? DID YOU READ THE LYRICS!?!?!

It is beyond me how you could think "Some stream of hope" can be oninous? It is about Love you muppet. You ever been in love? Well that describes the feeling. "Sleepless nights"..... think about it....

I've thought about it "buzzkiller". Nothing is certain, life isn't a friggin' bowl of cherries and double entendre (dual meanings, children) are ubiquitous in Mercury's lyrics.

Have you not considered that the "stream of hope" may be that promiscuity won't result in an infectious disease?

Do you folks have any awareness of the people and personalities behind the music or do you just naturally assume that everything anyone ever writes can only have the most obvious and literal meaning?

Next you'll be arguing that "2112" has nothing to do with abusive and stifling governments and is only about a guy who finds a guitar.

I've not said that anyone else's interpretation of the "obvious" meaning is wrong; in fact, I agreed with it!

Get off my jock now, okay?

Thank you.

Erm, Taylor wrote the song.........but I reckon you could be right Scottitude. Not 2 sure though is there any evidence 2 support what ur saying?

hey there, all:

i agree with scottitude that "the people and personalities" behind the songs can be super important to interpreting the meaning. i saw the video of "calling all girls" for the first time recently (in the dvd box set), and i have to say, the video sure looked to _me_ like a metaphor for homosexuality -- you know, a plea for freedom and tolerance for male-male love couched in the image of a repressive future world where _all_ love's forbidden (the robot love police, etc.) (this is kind of a classic way of talking about this issue, by the way... i don't know if any of you remember an unfortunately lame-ass episode of star trek the next generation that did the same thing. why am i bringing up star trek in the context of queen? only because we're talking about science fiction and metaphor, dudes. ;)

anyway, you _did_ notice how the girl who freddie's talking to about love looks exactly like a boy from the perspective of the people coming into the room, and you actually can't tell she's a girl until the close-up on her overly-made-up face? and how freddie then gets beaten up, imprisoned, and sent for "reconditioning" because he's a "criminal"? i'm not sure everyone knows how commonly all these procedures were used against gay men well into the 1960s -- including electroshock therapy, like what is apparently being done to freddie on the table -- but i bet freddie knew pretty damn well.

anyway, personally, when i think about the personalities involved, it seems to me pretty clear how to interpret the video and the song. i don't see it as really being about STDs, although since as scottitude says that shadow had appeared over gay male communities by that time, it might well be reflected in there somewhere.

about spreading the message of love to all those around you, far and near. again, sucky video but awesome song. may be about stds but im not to sure. but as the almighty brian may said, theres always more than 1 meaning to a song, even if its unconscious.
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The video of course refrefencing, the cult George Lucas fil THX 1138 (pre-Star Wars) What this has with the song, I don't know. It could be about how there's all this negative bullshit in the world about war and hunger and death, but ultimately it's important to get the message out that there's good in the world.

um, just cuz mercury died of aids does not mean all there songs have to be about being gay and getting stds

Queen is waaaaay more creative than that, and anyways it was written by Rodger Tayler...