I Want to Break Free

I Want to Break Free

Queen

The second single from Queen’s 11th studio album The Works, “I Want To Break Free” gained notoriety primarily for its controversial music video. The video featured the band dressed as the cast of the popular soap opera Coronation Street and has Freddie Mercury dancing with members of the Royal Ballet Theatre. Mercury plays a housewife who wants to “break free” from his constraining life.

Although music video is often believed to be Freddie Mercury’s idea, in an interview with Q magazine March 2011, when Brian May was asked whether each band member’s character in the video was an accurate reflection of their personalities, he answered:

Of Course! Everybody thinks that was Freddie’s idea because it looks like something that he would love to do but it actually came from Roger’s girlfriend at the time, strangely enough. It was her idea to pastiche the Coronation Street women.

Freddie, although shocked that the others suggested dressing up in drag for the video, doesn’t deny that he was actually dying to dress up in drag, and it was something in the back of his mind.

The soap opera parody was missed in the United States, where the video was interpreted as a celebration of transvestism and subsequently banned from MTV, which may have led to the song’s lack of success in the US as compared to the rest of the world.

The musicians dressed as female characters from Coronation Street. Left to right: Roger Taylor (as Suzie Birchall), Brian May (Hilda Ogden), Freddie Mercury (Bet Lynch) and John Deacon (Ena Sharples).