It's Late
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| "It's Late" | ||
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| Single by Queen | ||
| from the album News of the World | ||
| Released | 1978 (Canada, the United States, New Zealand and Japan only) | |
| Format | 7" | |
| Recorded | 1977 | |
| Genre | Hard rock | |
| Length | 6:22 | |
| Label | EMI, Elektra | |
| Writer(s) | Brian May | |
| Producer(s) | Queen and Mike Stone | |
| Chart positions | ||
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| Queen singles chronology | ||
| "Spread Your Wings" (1978) |
"It's Late" (1978) |
"Bicycle Race/Fat Bottomed Girls" (1979) |
"It's Late" is a hard rock song written by Queen guitarist Brian May and performed by the same band. The song was May's idea of treating a song as a three-act theatrical play, and the verses are called "acts" in the lyrics sheet. It makes use of the tapping technique one year before Eddie Van Halen supposedly "invented" it, although May told Guitarist Magazine in 1982 that he was inspired by an unnamed bar-band guitarist from Texas. The song is notable for its length and very heavy, raw and bluesy guitar riff, using the previously mentioned technique. It is somehow similar to the music of Led Zeppelin.
The song was released as a single in the US in 1978, albeit in heavily edited form, and peaked at #72 on the Billboard charts. The song was later included on the Queen Rocks compilation in 1997, and a new video was produced using footage of, curiously enough, Las Vegas and prostitutes, intercut with live performances of the song. As the song is about a man who falls in love with a woman but is too shy to tell her, this video might imply that the man might have fallen in love with a stripper. The fact that "falling in love with a stripper" is something of a cliché, and that the lyrics got some love song clichés as well (but if I told I love ya / in the candle light), it is quite possible that May wrote the song with this in mind. Nevertheless, it ranks amongst fans' favourite Queen songs.
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