Song Meanings: ’39

“‘39” is one of Queen’s most unusual and deceptively simple songs, written by guitarist Brian May and released on the band’s 1975 album A Night at the Opera, where it appears as the fifth track; it was also issued in June 1976 as the B-side of “You’re My Best Friend.” Musically, it is a striking departure from Queen’s heavier, theatrical sound, blending acoustic folk,

skiffle and rock with May’s acoustic guitar, John Deacon’s double bass, Roger Taylor’s percussion and backing vocals from Freddie Mercury and Taylor, while May himself sings the lead vocal. The title and opening lyrics can initially make the song sound like a story about 1939 and perhaps the outbreak of World War II, but that is a misleading impression: May conceived “‘39” as science fiction, telling of “volunteers”

who leave an overcrowded Earth aboard a spacecraft to seek a new world. The central idea is Einstein’s special theory of relativity and its time-dilation effect: because the travelers move at an enormous fraction of the speed of light, much less time passes for them than for people who remain on Earth. Thus, what seems to the travelers like roughly a year-long journey

results in about a century passing on Earth; when the narrator returns, he has aged only a year while his loved one has grown old and died, and he recognizes her in her daughter through the poignant image of “your mother’s eyes.” In other words, the song is not really about time travel in the usual science-fiction sense—

the travelers do not travel backward or forward through time independently—but about the real relativistic phenomenon in which a moving clock runs more slowly relative to a stationary observer. The exact year represented by “‘39” has never been firmly established, and its ambiguity helps the song initially resemble an old historical or maritime ballad; some listeners interpret it as 1939, while others see it as a future year such as 2039 or 2139.

There is also a fascinating numerical coincidence: “‘39” was the 39th Queen song when the band’s original album tracks are counted chronologically, although that is not established as the reason May chose the title. The recording is approximately 3:30 long, and the album version fades directly into “Sweet Lady,” whereas the single version has a separate fade-out;

later releases also include a 2005 acoustic performance by May, a 1977 live recording from Earl’s Court, and live versions on Live Killers and Return of the Champions. In concert, Freddie Mercury generally sang the lead vocal rather than May, giving the song a different character, and George Michael performed it at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert on April 20, 1992,

famously identifying “‘39” as his favorite Queen song and saying he had busked it on the London Underground. Although “‘39” was not released as an A-side and therefore has no individual major U.S. or U.K. single ranking, its parent album A Night at the Opera reached No. 1 in the United Kingdom and No. 4 on the U.S. Billboard 200, while the A-side “You’re My Best Friend” reached No. 7 in Britain and No. 16 in America. Today, “‘39” is widely regarded as one of Queen’s finest deep cuts,

particularly admired for the way May combined his knowledge of physics with an old-fashioned folk-song style, turning a genuinely scientific concept into a surprisingly emotional story about exploration, sacrifice, loneliness, aging and the terrible cost of returning home to a world that has moved on without you.