"
Love of My Life" is a
ballad by the English
rock band Queen from their 1975 album
A Night at the Opera. The song was written by
Freddie Mercury about Mary Austin, with whom he had a long term relationship in the early 1970s. After performing the song in South America, a live release of the single reached number 1 in
Argentina and
Brazil in 1981, and stayed in the charts in Argentina for an entire year.
Freddie Mercury wrote it on the
piano and
guitar first,
Brian May rearranged the song for acoustic
12-string guitar to facilitate live performances. May contributed occasional guitar phrases to the original recording and played the swooping
harp glissandos by pasting together multiple takes of single chords. The song is an example of Mercury's familiarity with
rubato phrasing, showcasing his classical piano influences, notably by
Chopin and
Beethoven. An acoustic version of the song features in the band's 1979 album
Live Killers.
With its similar lyrical theme, later single "
These Are the Days of Our Lives" would hark back to "Love of My Life", twice using the line "I still love you". At the end of "These Are the Days of Our Lives", Mercury simply speaks the words, as he would often do in live versions of "Love of My...
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