For the first time ive really began getting into this song. I believe it is truely one of Queens masterpeices. though can anybody give any insight into what the bloody hell its about. lyrics like 'water babies playing in a little pool deight' and 'a little nigger sugar and a rub a dub of baby oil' are crazy.
They are crazy actually, that's what makes the song a masterpiece.
I have no idea what the song is about, and i don't care. It's just great, to me nothing else matters. Maybe it just doesn't have any meaning. Freddie did write songs sometimes that hadn't any 'real' meaning, so you can listen and get the meaning you want the song to have.
That is so absolutely true. Too many people read to deeply into lyrics that there's no way they will ever get the meaning from. What's Bo Rhap about?" - listen to it, have a think and decide for yourself - be confident in your own mind enough to trust your own judgement.
Only the composer can ever say what something actually menas, but then that's reliant on 100% honesty from the writer......who may not want everyone to know the REAL meaning.....
I just take it as a description of the weird fairytale world and the Black Queen. It's pretty much up to your imagination, coupled with what images the music inspires, that make up your interpretation of the song.
I take music very visually, and automatically imagine images or thoughts to go with it.
I've always thought Queen II sounded almost like some weird sort of concept album.....like there could be a story linking all the songs (but dont ask me what that would be!)
I think that March Of The Black Queen forms sort of a couple with White Queen. WQ is on the white side of Queen II, MOTBQ is on the black side. In White Queen, written by Brian, I see the sad end of a wonderful relationship. In March Of The Black Queen, written by Freddie, I see the opposite: the relationship is far from wonderful, yet it continues.
I think that MOTBQ is a very sarcastic song and tells us about the power that a certain woman has over her man, and all the stupid things that this man does to please her. Sometimes he is rewarded, most of the time he is punished. Makes him question why he follows her and where she goes, from the beginning of the song.
These ups and downs are being reflected by many metaphors for alternating positive and negative feelings. Some examples about the nigger sugar and the blue powder monkeys that were mentioned earlier:
"A little nigger sugar then a rub-a-dub-a baby oil"...
Nigger sugar is an ancient expression for raw cane sugar. During the slavery period, sugar was brought from Africa, where it had been extracted from sugar-cane. This extraction process was done by the slaves, who stamped it with their feet. After this, the raw sugar was further processed to clear it. The cheapest sugar was not post-processed and thus kept its brown colour. However, people believed that the brown colour came from the feet of the slaves, and thus this sugar soon was referred to as "nigger sugar". Only the rich people could afford white sugar, and nigger sugar had to suffice for the poor. In this light, "a little nigger sugar" can be translated to a poor situation, or, can be seen as a metaphor for the dark side of the relationship. This however is followed by the "rub-a-dub-a baby oil". If we consider the "dub-a" only to be a doggerel to "rub-a", then it would read "rub-a baby oil", or "rub of (as in "rub with") baby oil". This might relate to a massage and there you have the ups and downs in the relationship.
"Blue powder monkeys praying in the dead of night"...
"Powder monkey" is a slang expression for a person who carries or sets explosives (the word comes from old navigation, where it was a boy employed on war vessels to carry gunpowder). A "blue powder monkey" would then be a sad person (as in "having the blues") whose mind is in an explosive state. He's praying in the dead of night for all of this to end.
Hey, just some thoughts :-)
Anyway, I once ran a geocities website which tried to interpret several old Queen lyrics line by line. MOTBQ was one of those and the text above comes from one of my backup files. I'll try and see if it's still online somewhere.
I have always felt that MOTBQ is the greatest track on any album - I think it knocks Bo Rap into a cocked hat! I can remember hearing it for the 1st time when I bought the album in 75 when I first got into Queen and thinking Whooooooooaaaaa!! It really does send shivers up my spine even after 30 years. As for the lyrics?? well - god only knows really. Somewhere in a distorted fairytale world - mixed bits of Midsummers Nights DReam (as in Fairy Fellow) and The Water babies. Wonderful wonderful piece of escapicism and nonsense!!
Never really known what Black Queen is about. Much of the album seems to have something to do with fairies/fantasy stuff. It is an awesome track. One of the best by anyone of any group. I remember hearing Brian explain that White Queen was about the moon in an interview once however.
the_hero wrote: I still try to remember the site where a girl reviewed White Queen and Manrch of the black Queen...
She thought that White Queen was about a woman who died and a guy that can't live without her and keeps hallucinating she's with him. And then in March of the Black Queen the guy has gone to heaven and discoveres the woman went to hell, where she became the Black Queen.
Now the guy is willing to sacrifice everything (Roger's part) to go to hell and serve her and later on they dance together in hell
Bit unrealistic but a fucking good review
I read a very similar thing like that and it could be the same one except what I understood from it was that in White Queen this chick dies and at the end the guy kills himself to be with her. Then in MOTBQ, he's gone to hell because he killed himself and then she's not there and then she comes to get him but he wants to stay with the black queen.