10 Best-Selling Rock Singles Of All Time
5. Queen, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (1975)
Total weeks on the UK Singles Chart: 47
YouTube views to date: 1.46 billion
From 1975's A Night At The Opera comes Queen's most universally beloved and instantly recognisable single, 'Bohemian Rhapsody'.
Unlike the other rock music of the period, or even anything the band had done before, 'Bohemian Rhapsody' dared to challenge listeners and radio stations alike with a six-minute rhapsody (a single piece of music with an improvisational style and no repeated parts). But the gamble worked, and with it came an epic piece of rock music history that cemented the band as one of the most visionary, daring and pioneering acts ever to commit their sound to tape.
The track led the UK singles chart for nine weeks straight upon its release and sold over a million copies domestically within its first year of release. It has since amassed an estimated actual global sales figure (not counting streaming, of course) of 11 million singles to date.
Several events since the song's release have helped it re-enter the charts and keep connecting with subsequent generations of listeners, including the untimely death of lead singer Freddie Mercury and the track's extended (three-minute, to be precise) inclusion in the Mike Myers comedy vehicle Wayne's World, which helped place it at number two in the Billboard Hot 100.
As chart-topping, best-selling rock songs go, we may never see better. But that might not be be such a bad thing.