"I Want to Break Free" ( sample) is a song by the British rock band Queen, which was written by its bassist John Deacon. The song was featured on the Queen's 1984 album The Works and distributed as a single on 7-inch and 12-inch vinyl records and 3-inch and 5-inch CDs. The song had three versions: album, single and extended, differing in length by a more than a factor of 2. It was included in most live concerts by the group, in several videos, and in The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert where it was sung by Lisa Stansfield.
The song is largely known for its music video for which all the band members dressed in women's clothes, a concept proposed by Roger Taylor, which parodied the long-running British soap opera Coronation Street. The second part of the video included a composition rehearsed and performed with the Royal Ballet and choreographed by Wayne Eagling. Whereas the parody was acclaimed in the UK, it was considered controversial in the US and banned by MTV and other stations. After its release in 1984 the single of the song was well received all over Europe and South America, where it was listed within top ten and regarded as an anthem of fight against oppression. The single reached only the 45th position in the US charts, but reached number 3 in the UK and was certified gold with 400,000+ copies sold.
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Famous quotes containing the words break and/or free:
“For rhetoric, he could not ope
His mouth, but out there flew a trope;
And when he happen’d to break off
I’ th’ middle of his speech, or cough,
H’ had hard words ready to show why,
And tell what rules he did it by;”
—Samuel Butler (1612–1680)
“We enter parliament in order to supply ourselves, in the arsenal of democracy, with its own weapons.... If democracy is so stupid as to give us free tickets and salaries for this bear’s work, that is its affair.... We do not come as friends, nor even as neutrals. We come as enemies. As the wolf bursts into the flock, so we come.”
—Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945)