Bolstered by the movie of the same name, Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” was this week named the most-streamed song from the 20th Century.
Universal Music Group, which represents the British band’s music outside North America, said the song surpassed 1.6 billion streams globally across all major services on Monday.
“So the River of Rock Music has metamorphosed into streams! Very happy that our music is still flowing to the max,” guitarist Brian May said, in a release.
“Bohemian Rhapsody” appears on Queen’s 1975 album A Night at the Opera. Released as a single on Oct. 31, 1975, it was the band’s first Top 10 hit in the U.S. and spent nine weeks at the top of the UK charts.
According to Universal, the video for the song was filmed in three hours at Queen’s rehearsal space at a cost of about $6,000.
The song was given new life in 1992 when it was featured in Wayne’s World, starring Canada’s Mike Myers (who has a cameo as a record label executive in Bohemian Rhapsody).
“Growing up in the suburbs of Toronto, we’d be driving down the Don Valley Parkway and on CHUM FM, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ came on,” he recalled in November. When Wayne’s World was in development, Myers knew he wanted to use the song but the studio wanted Wayne and Garth to rock out to something by Guns ’N Roses.
“It wasn’t something I grew up with,” he said.
Universal said one of the songs “Bohemian Rhapsody” surpassed in streams this week was Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine.”