Why I Love 39 by Queen

This post is slightly later than I intended, I was being a bit useless at the weekend. This post is also not on the preliminary list of posts I came up with, but I don't care because this is an excellent song.

Queen have many excellent, well known songs. I don't really need to explain why I like Bohemian Rhapsody, or One Vision, or Killer Queen. 

I walked down the aisle to Brian May's version of the wedding march from Flash Gordon and me and my husband had You're My Best Friend playing -among other songs- after the wedding ceremony.

The first time I heard 39 I didn't realise it was Queen because the song is sung -and written- by Brian May, and I often identify songs or bands by vocalist. I was listening on my ipod shuffle, which doesn't give you any song info.
The lyrics really struck me and I ended up listening to the song three times in order to get the whole thing, then once I was home I immediately looked it up.

39

In the year of thirty-nine
Assembled here the volunteers
In the days when lands were few
Here the ship sailed out into the blue and sunny morn
The sweetest sight ever seen
And the night followed day
And the story tellers say
That the score brave souls inside
For many a lonely day
Sailed across the milky seas
Ne'er looked back never feared never cried

Don't you hear my call
Though you're many years away
Don't you hear me calling you
Write your letters in the sand
For the day I'll take your hand
In the land that our grand-children knew

In the year of thirty-nine
Came a ship in from the blue
The volunteers came home that day
And they bring good news
Of a world so newly born
Though their hearts so heavily weigh
For the earth is old and grey
little darlin' well away
But my love this cannot be
Oh so many years have gone
Though i'm older but a year
Your mother's eyes from your eyes cry to me

Don't you hear my call
Though you're many years away
Don't you hear me calling you
Write your letters in the sand
For the day I'll take your hand
In the land that our grand-children knew

Don't you hear my call
Though you're many years away
Don't you hear me calling you
All your letters in the sand
Cannot heal me like your hand
For my life's still ahead, pity me.

'In the land that our grandchildren knew' was the lyric the really caught my attention. My initial thought was of time travel and it turns out that I was sort of right.

Although people thought that the song was about war (being in the year of '39 and all) or colonisation, it's quite clear that the song is actually about lost love and time dilation. It's actually beautiful in a sad way.
A brave astronaut helps find the new world his people so dearly need, but in doing that he loses the love of his life as she ages and (presumably) dies in the 'year' he's away. The last line is so full of emotion it's heart-breaking.

This song is the reason I learned about time dilation as I spoke to my husband about the song and he explained about how time dilation works and how it's to do with relativity. The faster and further a spaceship goes, the more time passes on the home planet. Like in Flight of the Navigator, which I saw various times as a child, although I've never seen the beginning.

It's not surprising that this is the subject matter as Brian May has a PhD in Astrophysics.

The song has folksy guitar and soaring background vocals, which reflect both the sad simplicity of lost love and the grand ideas of the SF setting.

I'm no music expert, and have done limited research into musical SF (although any suggestions in this area are appreciated), but I think this song doesn't get the attention it so clearly deserves.