Welcome to another edition of Track of the Day. For those who have been following lately, we’ve been going on a bit of a journey with Queen.
Week 1 brought us all the way to Queen’s self-titled album with My Fairy King, and last week we skipped ahead straight to A Day at the Races with the Brian May-penned Long Away.
Today, we’re skipping ahead much further into Queen’s discography. In fact, we’re going to the very end. The last three albums by Queen are hard to listen to becase we know about Freddie Mercury’s mortality. By the time The Miracle came out in 1989, he had disclosed his AIDS diagnosis to his bandmates. Innuendo was released in 1991, months before Mercury’s death. Made In Heaven was released in 1995.
I’m going to quickly go through the two bookends of this tragic trilogy.
Was It All Worth It (The Miracle): This feels like Mercury’s first attempt at saying goodbye. Queen returns to its hard-rock, camp and glamourous roots. It doesn’t live up to what they did in the 70s, but that’s not the point. The point is the question: “Was it all worth it?” His answer is yes. But the song seems like a practice in self-reflection, a man nearing the end of his life asking what left is there to do, did he accomplish all that he can.
Mother Love (Made In Heaven): It’s been years since I listened to this one. By the time Queen recorded this album, Mercury’s health was in serious decline and he knew his life was ending. According to Brian May, Mercury instructed him to sing anything and he would leave the band “as much as I possibly can”.
This is the song in which Freddie Mercury dies. He sang all of this that he could, but was too tired to complete it. He sang some of the lyrics in May 1991 and died in November. You can hear the final words he sings at aroudn 2:57, leaving Brian May to sing the final verse. It’s a horrible song to listen to. After he sings the final verse we hear a few bits from peak Queen, and a compressed version of every single song the band recorded sped up incredibly fast.
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Between those two songs came Innuendo, a tremendous record featuring three superb songs. Two deal with Merucry’s corporeal fatality and artistic immoratality.
The first is These Are the Days of Our Lives, written by drummer Roger Taylor. An interesting songwriter, as it involves someone who is reminiscing the band’s past whilst also coping with its present and future. The video accompanying it is a difficult watch and had to be recorded in black + white because of Freddie’s health. It’s a tender song. At the end Freddie says the final words to his fans: “I still love”, then snaps his fingers and vanishes from the screen.
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But none of those are our Track of the Day. For that, we go to the song that closed Innuendo.
I’m talking about the final song Queen released in Freddie Mercury’s life: The Show Must Go Own.
The Show Must Go On is a breathtaking display of defiance against death.
In a deeply ironic twist it was the synthesiser, an instrument Queen had shunned, that delivered the foreboding pulse that carried this song from the very beginning.
But the song is so much more than a synthesiser. The song is Freddie Mercury, delivering the power ballad to end all power ballads. It is the best closing track Queen recorded on any of their records.
And he did it standing outside death’s door.
When it was time for Freddie Mercury to deliver the vocals, he was very ill. But why listen to me write about it when you can hear it from Brian May?
Was It All Worth It was the precursor to The Show Must Go On, one of the greatest songs Queen ever recorded.
You could even say it was the most powerful song they ever put forth. Stronger than Seven Seas of Rhye, Bohemian Rhapsody, Somebody to Love and We are the Champions.
Nothing compares to The Show Must Go On, because it defied the idea of death:
My soul is painted like the wings of butterflies
Fairy tales of yesterday grow but never die
I can fly, my friends
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Exploring Queen’s discography is more difficult than most other artists’ because we know how it ends.
It’s heatbreaking to start with the self-titled album’s Liar in 1973, through their prog-rock and glam-rock phase with 1974’s Killer Queen, the indestructible Bohemian Rhapsody in 1975, to Mercury’s passing in 1991.
But, 34 years later, the legend of Queen lives on.
Fitzie’s track of the day: The Show Must Go On, by Queen
And now for your links:
The Athletic ($$): “Mason Melia: The Irish striker Spurs have signed but who can’t play until 2026”
Alasdair Gold: “Romero spotted, Son’s key Bergvall chat, Archie Gray’s incredible skills and Ben Davies’ six words”