Bo Rhap Billion!

Queen launch competition to celebrate.

The video for Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody is the first promo of the pre-1990s to be viewed a billion times on YouTube. To celebrate this milestone, the band are releasing a remastered, hi-definition version, and have also announced a campaign titled You Are The Champions, giving fans the chance to take a starring role in three new user-generated videos for a trio of the band’s best-loved songs.

To that end, Queen are looking for musicians, singers and instrumentalists for their own take on Bohemian Rhapsody, while dancers are invited to submit their own routines for Don’t Stop Me Now. Visual artists will also have the chance to design something around a word or phrase from A Kind Of Magic’s lyrics.

Guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor say: “We want to thank you all and to celebrate with our amazing fans all around the world by creating three new music videos to our songs, all featuring you! Whether you are a musician, singer, dancer, visual artist or you just want to have some fun. Visit www.youarethechampions.com to find out more, and we’ll see you on the road somewhere.” The completed videos will be uploaded later this year to the official Queen YouTube channel.

Billboard magazine reports that since the release of their award-winning movie Bohemian Rhapsody last October, Queen’s on-demand streams have more than tripled, leaping from 588 million to 1.9 billion, compared to the six months prior to its debut, while sales of tracks have shown a sharp rise from 527,000 to 1.9m in the half-year following its premiere.

Meanwhile, with the band’s latest Adam Lambert-fronted American tour now under way, May responded via Twitter to end suggestions that the band might be working with a Freddie Mercury impersonator. The guitarist blasted that without the 37-year-old, “Queen would not be out here delivering at the top level. Adam Lambert is only now beginning to be recognised by the greater public as the true phenomenon that he is.”