"The Millionaire Waltz" by Queen

You're going to see quite a few Queen songs by me during the semester, but they'll all be unique. No one can accuse Queen of sticking to a formula.

As the title would indicate, the style of the song is a waltz. To give a general idea of the lyrics is to sum it by the line from the final line of the song, "You make me feel like a millionaire" as one emotional feeling and the other emotion being expressed by the repeated line in the middle, "Come back to me"

The song begins with the piano doing a very basic boom chick chick waltz. Then the piano is joined by the bass for a duet which is a very unusual and interesting sounding combo and goes a whole 24 measure without any feeling of cadence, though this isn't terribly with a brisk waltz tempo. The chord structure stays very simple, and the rhythm still maintains a waltz feel, though the duet contains some syncopation of eighth notes. This feeling is lost a little bit at the end where the piano wraps up the phrase with a 1 2 & (3) & figure for a couple measure which would be better felt in 6/8 if it weren't an isolated couple of measures.

The first verse then comes in with music very similar to the beginning as the beginning with the bass doing more accompanying and can be split into nice eight measure phrases. After the vocalist sings for the first three phrases (with backup singers on the third) the fourth phrase is taken over by a guitar solo which transitions into one of many parts where there is no strong tempo.

The next phrase has a wonderful building up of instrumentation and tempo. It starts with just the singer and then adds a piano on each beat (w/o waltz feel), and then builds up with the piano doing the regular waltz feel and then the bass doing the downbeats, the down and up beats, and finally a two measure eighth note run to reach a high point for the phrase with the backup singers.

The overall feel of the previous phrase is repeated, but this time in a minor mode, which serves to contrast the happy lyrics (remembrance of love) of the previous phrase to the sad ones (currently separated from love) of this phrase.

The lyrics now are centered around "come back to me, my love" and the background music becomes more dense with the addition of guitar accompaniment and finally the addition of drums with the singer being very emotional.

This then breaks apart to a very simple waltz with the guitar providing a solo that has a degree of complexity but still fits well into the waltz feel.

Then there is another slow section without the heavy accompaniment and then the guitar comes back in and builds to a repeat (finally, a section that can truly be called repeated, over 4 minutes into the song) but with full backup singers supporting the important words of the lead singer.

The 6/8 like section is elongated this time with some guitar and drums, followed by the last verse "you make me feel (with a great piano trill) like a millionaire" with a final do-sol-mi-do on the guitar to solidify the ending.

Wow, I wrote quite a lot about this one. It's hard to keep a song like this concise because the only true repeated section is the initial and final verse. There are other similarities within the music but no concrete ones, which makes the music constantly exciting and fits in well with the shifting emotions of the lyrics of a person separated from love.