Innuendo
£3.60
- Innuendo
- I m Going Slightly Mad
- Headlong
- I Can t Live With You
- Don t Try So Hard
- Ride The Wild Wind
- All God s People
- These Are The Days Of Our Lives
- Delilah
- Hitman
- Bijou
- Show Must Go On
Through the sorrow all through our splendour - - Love it! even went as far as to buy the picture disc single. yeah we ll keep on smiling -
Not great but not bad either... - What we have here is probably Queens best effort since 1984 s `The Works album but still a far from perfect affair. A lot of fans don t just judge this simply as the bands next record but the final chapter of Queen in the context of Freddie Mercury fighting a losing battle for his life during the recording (he passed away later in the year). With Freddie on borrowed time and clearly deteriorating, this must have been an incredibly difficult album to work on for everyone involved - quite how the 4 members of the band got through it is quite unbelievable. The record does start of strongly with the title track recalling early Queen (there are elements of Queen II and A Night at the Opera here) and does contain a few really good moments (Show Must Go On, Bijou, Innuendo, Headlong, Don t Try So Hard, Days of Our Lives). However there are far to many below average cuts here (Hitman, All God s People) not to mention some truly woeful and frankly embarrassing attempts (Delilah, Ride The Wild Wind, Slightly Mad). Quite why they though anyone would want to hear a song about Freddie s cat complete with Meeeowwww-ing guitar solos is anyone s guess...The production is strange too - yes its as polished as one expects from a Queen album but the vocals sound `tinny and thin in places. Although Freddie gives an absolutely stunning performance - especially considering his health at the time, you don t always get the feeling that he is really getting into some of the lyrics presented to him for this record by his other bandmates - his delivery could even be described as pedestrian at times. This is balanced out by times when he is totally engrossed and living in the music on, for example, The Show Must Go On.Overall it s not a terrible album but its not a great album either. Compare it to the stunning Queen II, Sheer Heart Attack, Night At The Opera and the excellent News of the World album, it doesn t stand up. Too often it sounds like the work of bored 40-odd year old millionaires with a record contract to see out.
Takes over where Races leaves off - After the sugar-coated 80 s, Queen rediscover their grit in this magnum opus and a huge return to form. The title track s overblown Zeppelin ambitions retain just enough originality and flair, while Slightly Mad tips the scales in the other direction, Mercury returning to the vaudeville humour so intergral to Queen s mid 70 s era and missing since. The humour doesn t stop there, All God s People, sincere at heart, has all the overblown theatrics of Bycicle Race/Bohemian Rhapsody and then a bit! It s only the self-indulgent and scratchy Bijou that lets the side down. Otherwise - bravo!
Never rated this album - I was always a big Queen fan (throughout the 70s and 80s) but I never liked this album. Innuendo, The Show Must Go On and These Are The Days.... are great tracks but the rest, in my opinion, aren t up to scratch and the majority of them have very banal lyrics. I know Freddie (God bless him) was very ill at this stage, but the quality control is sadly lacking with awful tracks like Delilah and Don t Try So Hard. The last Queen album which I loved was A Kind Of Magic - best not to touch The Miracle or this album.
The Final Curtain - By 1991 Queen were probably not as relevent as they had been. Other bands such as Nirvana, Metallica and REM were becoming the mainstream of live bands by this point. Besides it had been 5 years since they last toured. It is a fantastic album nonetheless starting off with the masterpiece Innuendo which is possibly my favorite all time queen track with a heavly influnced bollero feel to it, the longest single to date surpassing Bohemian Rhapsody and reached number 1 in the charts that year. This album is very pognoint at times with songs and lyrics harping back to yesteryear. Notable tracks that stick out are The Show must go On, Don t Try Hard, Headlong and The hitman with it s heavy guitar and bass sound and These Are The Days Of Our Lives which is a very sad song indeed probably written by freddie and the despair he was probably going through at that point. It s a great send off to the last ever proper queen album made. Optimistic, it Isn t but its a very honest conclusion and it took a lot of strengh and courage for freddie to complete going by how ill he must have been by this point.