Thoughts on latter day Queen? (A Kind of Magic onward)

Gonna just say anything with Freddie Mercury's voice is pure magic to me. He could sing the phone book or the alphabet, throw a cool Brian May solo on top and I'd be intrigued.

 

I know Freddie was singing anything in front of him from 1989 onward AND John was his boy, but come on, not a good track for a tribute album. All the other tunes are good to great.

 

I honestly prefer synthy Queen to rocky Queen.

 

This as close as he got to singing a phonebook. Re-using a ton of lyrics from other songs never sounded so good.

 

Sure, Queen's latter-day career does not quite match up to their work in the 1970's - that's about right.

However, I'm of the firm belief that Queen's 1980's output is far superior to the vast majority of work by their peers in the same period. Queen were still releasing hit albums and hit singles all through the decade, and the music backs that up. They're not stone cold classics, but any Queen album at this point beats anything conjured up by The Who, The Rolling Stones, those ex of The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and so on and so forth. No question in my mind.

I agree with many on here regarding A Kind Of Magic - good songs, but there is no flow as an album. You can immediately tell they've just lobbed in bits and bobs from various sessions over the last twelve months.

The Miracle has great songs, some filler (though I do like "Rain Must Fall"!) and a fairly weak production in places. It really has its strong points but this is not an 'immediate' album by any stretch.

As also suggested above, Innuendo is a great return to form. It is very similar to The Miracle in certain ways (including production, which is one of the minor quibbles), but it is darker, more nihilistic and has some real focused songwriting. The first Queen album since arguably A Night At The Opera where it doesn't feel like there is an obvious "possible single/probable filler" divide.

And I have to include Made In Heaven. Some angrily dispute this, but hey - if Let It Be is allowed, then why not this? Freddie knew about the project and assented to it all along. He knew he didn't have enough to time to craft the final album, so he worked as much as he could and was very much in agreement with the idea of raiding the vaults to get it finished. I love the album, it has a real life-affirming positivity to it.

Also, you can probably get an albums worth of non-album B-sides combined from each of these sessions, as well as the couple of bits that came after. There are a few solo works from this era too: Barcelona by Freddie and Montserrat Caballé sounds almost like super-mega-1970's Queen in places. Roger's side project The Cross released three albums; Shove It (largely rubbish excepting "Heaven For Everyone,") Mad Bad & Dangerous To Know (okay era-fitting hard rock) and Blue Rock (ditto). Brian's Back To The Light was a hit record with two top-10 singles and is definitely worth a listen.

 

This sounds very early. What year? Thanks for this.

 

Having just completed listening to the Studio Collection, in order, in its entirety, and admittedly being enamored enough with FM’s voice that I enjoy EVERYTHING from Queen, I will say my opinion is this: if their career were a graph... the line starts in the middle, spikes off the graph to incredible heights, comes back down, and keeps heading that way until the end.

 

Soul Brother was the b-side of Under Pressure. So probably recorded 1980/1981.

 

So, so much this.

Freddie knew about Made in Heaven? I didn't know that.

 

Even though many of the later albums are a bit spotty, the best songs are usually pretty awesome. I have no use for probably half of the songs on The Miracle, but I Want It All, Breakthru and Was It All Worth It are all freaking great, and I like the title track quite a bit as well.

As for Made in Heaven, I am big fan of Let Me Live. I love how the lead vocals are traded off between Freddie, Roger and Brian.

 

I'd love a deluxe Made In Heaven.

1. Original album
2. Alternate album with original demo's/alternate versions (e.g. Mother Love with Roger vocals, Let Me Live demo with Rod Stewart, You Don't Fool Me with RT vocals etc.)
3. Album in 5.1 remix
4. Radio edits, remixes, b-sides #1
5. Radio edits, remixes, b-sides (including No-One But You, Love Kills, TMBMTLTT and LMI(YHA) #2
6. DVD/Bluray with an in-depth documentary about making the album

Will never happen, obviously. It's Queen after all.

 

I think both A Kind Of Magic and The Miracle are very poor albums. Innuendo is inconsistent, but there are a couple of strong highlights. Made In Heaven is better than expected but not great.

 

Given how adroitly Brian hawked himself about, anything less than that result would have been a complete waste of Parlophone's money. It was, though, SIGNIFICANTLY better than what "Another World" contained. Both were contained cracking examples of the "cheese" that Brian would later serve up to the collaboration with Paul Rodgers.

 

I wish Brian would've hired a separate singer to interpret his songs. He could've done something akin to Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow. A great songwriter and lyricist, but his voice, especially in the harder rock tunes, is so weak imo.

 

I liked Another World quite a bit.

 

Perhaps a part, even a large part, of the reason Freddie stopped playing piano is that he was saving his strength for his vocals etc. That he didnt have the stamina to spend a lot of time in the studio with keyboards etc when he really wanted to nail his vocals and give as much to the band as possible before he died. After all, originally they thought The Miracle would be their last. Fortunately, we got Innuendo and Made In Heaven as well. I can live without Freddie playing all the keyboards if it means we get more songs.

 

Pretty much, given how rapidly he was declining, it was one or the other. I'm sure if he could've, he would've done both.

 

I love the intro to 'BreakThru'. I think that must've been the last piano we heard from him.

 

I love Queen and would put them in my top 5 favorites ever. A Kind of Magic is the only latter album I can sit through, though. The rest is fine on Greatest Hits Vol 2 every now and then.

 

Both albums are basically compilations of stuff which he had worked on and off again for years. BTTL had stuff dating back to the Flash Gordon sessions and Another World had songs which had been recorded 4-5 years previously as well (and apparently Why Don't We Try Again dated back to the Queen days!). Both albums have some great tracks which could've been even better with a great singer (Business, Cyborg). Have to say I quite like some of the rest of the material. Driven By You, On My Way Up, the title tracks of both albums, WDWTA etc. Brian's best solo tracks are IMO him just on a piano/guitar ("Another World", "Dream of Thee" - though I don't really care for his TMLWKY).

Still... just imagine that after recording No-One But You the band decided to go ahead and record an entire album.

 

Oh, yes...... The possibilities could have been endless and, Brian's relationship with Paul Rodgers at the time being what it was, he'd have been an incredible fit for ALL of that material. I get the feeling though, that QPL and Old Beechy Boy would have put the anchors on ANYTHING That would have potentially made Queen (with Freddie) take a back seat.

Imagine those recordings above happening and then, commercially, succeeding the USA on a scale not achieved there by the original band during the 1980's........

 

It came on at the exact moment I started reading your post. It is absolutely fantastic and I've heard it three times in a row now. Kinda spolis the flow of the album, tho...

Few have ever matched the feeling of sheer joyousness Freddie could express with his voice (see also: "You & I", "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", "Don't Stop Me Now", "Somebody to Love", etc etc). He could conjure up many emotions, don't get me wrong. But joy must the hardest one to pull off.

The piano, the fretless bass solo, the harmonies, faux organ and guitar parts are also very notable. Even the (at least in part) programmed or looped drums are great here

And then "Rain Must Fall" came on. How fitting that title is

 

Innuendo has a few filler songs but overall my favorite late period Queen album.

 

The earlier Queen albums, in my opinion, had really strong album tracks. I think when you get into the 80s, the album tracks are a lot weaker than the singles. The singles are still top notch Queen in this time period; I think this led to the perception of them being a "Greatest Hits" band as opposed to an album band.

A Kind Of Magic is really all over the place, which is strange since it's really glued together by The Highlander as a concept. If you look at the production credits, all of the Mercury & Deacon songs are produced by Mack, whereas the May & Taylor songs are produced by David Richards. I think this might be part of the fractured nature of the album. The Miracle has really strong singles, but I think it may have the weakest album tracks of any Queen album. Innuendo is generally considered a return to form for the band. Not all of the album tracks are top notch, but I think the album overall is cohesive and strong.

As for Made In Heaven, given the tracks used and the various sources, it is a really cohesive album. It really sticks together as a concept and is an easy album to listen to. I know many here consider this a compilation album, but I think it works as the "final" Queen album. The Cosmos Rocks is polarizing for sure. I think it's a fun album. It's what I expect of a combination of Roger/May/Taylor. Anytime you use the word "Queen" without Freddie Mercury, it becomes a bit of a problem for many.

 

I think "The Game" is their most boring work. Everything before and after is better.